French telecom towers investor Cignal ups financing to €65m
TELECOMMUNICATIONS infrastructure provider Cignal has refinanced and expanded a debt facility to €65m, giving it headroom to invest in new telecoms and broadband communications towers. The company, which was launched in 2015 with the acquisition of a portfolio of 400 communications towers from state-owned forestry company Coillte, is owned by French investment fund, Infravia Capital Partners. Cignal acquired the masts from Coillte for about €70m. The company has invested €15m in its tower infrastructure over the past 18 months, which includes the acquisition of new masts and the construction of additional ones. It now has more than 500 towers around the country. The acquisition of the Coillte masts was backed by a €31.5m facility supported by Bank of Ireland. The bank acted as the lead arranger for the new facilities, and has brought in AIB as a joint lender. The fresh financing was sealed in July. Cignal CEO Colin Cunningham said the new facility would “support the next phase in our growth plans”. The company’s chairman, Donal O’Shaughnessy, said that the firm remains committed to providing “valuable infrastructure to help provide telecoms and broadband services to local communities”. The most recent set of publicly available accounts for Cignal show it had fixed assets worth €72.2m at the end of 2016. It now has 18pc of the Irish market for infrastructure supporting mobile, fixed wireless broadband communications and broadcast services, with a customer base that includes all the main mobile services providers in Ireland, the emergency services and FM radio stations.