(Bloomberg) -- Top Philippine telco PLDT Inc. plans to wrap up talks with a foreign investor this year for the sale of up to 49% stake in its data center business, after discussions with Japan’s Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. fell through.
“We are still under discussion with one particular investor,” PLDT Chairman and CEO Manuel Pangilinan told reporters on Tuesday, adding that talks are “progressing well.”
Pangilinan declined to confirm a Philippine Star report on Monday that PLDT is in talks with CVC Capital Partners for the data center stake sale.
Previous talks with other bidders, which included NTT, a key shareholder of PLDT, did not progress because they wanted a majority stake in PLDT’s data center unit, Pangilinan said. “Either we sell down up to 49% or we stay at 100%,” he said during PLDT’s earnings briefing.
Pangilinan later said giving up majority ownership of the data center business would mean that “our revenues will drop by 6 billion (pesos).”
The CEO had earlier valued PLDT’s entire data center business at over $1 billion and that the partial sale is aimed at paring the company’s debt.
The company owns the largest data center network in the Philippines, covering 10 facilities with a combined 8,930 racks. It’s building an 11th site that will have 4,500 racks and will bring the total load to nearly 80 megawatts.
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