Telecom Italia (TIM) has completed the sale of its remaining stake in tower operator Infrastructure Wireless Italiane (Inwit) for €250 million ($263m) to French private equity firm Ardian SAS.

The company's asset was a 10 percent stake in Daphne 3, a holding company for Inwit, which owns 29.9 percent of Inwit.

Telecom Italia
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The sale was initially confirmed in August, following reports earlier this year that the telco was looking to sell its stake in the tower unit.

TIM noted that the agreement is based on a valuation of Inwit's share price of €10.43 ($11.39).

Ardian now fully owns Daphne 3. Before its acquisition, the company already owned 90 percent of the holding company, after acquiring a 41 percent stake from TIM in 2022 for €1.3 billion ($1.37bn).

In June, TIM completed the long-awaited sale of its fixed line network, NetCo, to US investment firm KKR, in a deal that could be worth as much as €22 billion ($23.15bn) with earn-out payments.

Separately, TIM noted that it had extended discussions to sell its Sparkle wholesale unit.

The Italian government made a fresh €700 million ($737m) bid for Telecom Italia’s (TIM) Sparkle submarine cable unit in October, in partnership with Retelit SpA, a subsidiary of Spanish investment company Asterion Industrial Partners.

The government had a previous undisclosed offer for the unit rejected in February. TIM wants up to €750 million ($789m).

"TIM's board of directors, which met today under the chairmanship of Alberta Figari, took note of the advanced state of negotiations in progress with the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Retelit S.p.A. for the acquisition of TI Sparkle S.p.A., and agreed to the latter's request to extend the deadline for receipt of a binding offer to 16 December 2024," said TIM in a statement last Friday (November 29).

Sparkle operates more than 600,000km of cables connecting countries across Europe and the Americas, and Italy is seeking to bring this network under state ownership as part of a plan from Giorgia Meloni’s government to take control of more strategic assets.