The Times Online is reporting that Global Crossing is considering a sale of its UK operations [1]. A sale of GCUK cannot exist in a vacuum, it sounds like a strategy to maximize the sale value for Singapore Technologies Telemedia (STT) by breaking it up into pieces. GCUK is the most valuable piece of GLBC and its financial lynchpin, and without it the company looks rather non-viable. Impsat is another separable piece, but the rest consists of US and continental European networks that have basically no metro assets that still have alot of revenue and nothing to show for it.
GLBC has struggled since exiting bankruptcy. Of late they have been doing better, however the fact that reaching positive ebitda was so hard after all this time and on all that revenue just shows how deep the structural problems were (and are) – the lack of metro assets anywhere outside the UK means they keep too few cents on every dollar they make. If you don’t have scale at the $2.5B in revenue, it just isn’t coming. Their improvement has always been under the shadow of the question ‘What next?’ Positive ebitda is not positive earnings, and they have been able to coast without major investment in their network for a long time now. Their transatlantic cables AC-1 and AC-2 are basically full, they will have to pay for transatlantic traffic growth from here.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if GLBC is the next big M&A in telecom, tomorrow I’ll consider who might be doing the acquiring…
3 Comments To "Global Crossing on the block?"
#1 Pingback By C&W raises its bid for THUS On July 1, 2008 @ 10:23 am
[…] It seems clear, however, that THUS will be sold one way or another this year, and I think this may trigger additional consolidation in the UK telecom space which will reverberate through both Europe and the USA. Global Crossing may not have a for-sale sign in the window, but at this point everyone knows they are both in the market and on the market. If they are unable (as seems likely) to snatch THUS from C&W to combine with GCUK, their choices will be narrowed and they will likely be the next to sell out, most likely to Level 3. But such an entry by Level 3 into the UK market might disturb the wholesale relationship they have had toward current UK operators, so one way or another GCUK might really get sold separately as earlier rumors suggested. […]
#2 Pingback By Global Crossing Earnings Preview On August 4, 2008 @ 1:55 am
[…] carrier – Global Crossing. A combination of M&A rumors and internal turnover have raised speculation that the company will be sold soon, but the price it would bring remains unclear. The company has […]
#3 Pingback By THUS Finally Gives In On September 2, 2008 @ 8:06 pm
[…] UK telecom sector has been in desperate need of some consolidation. There was speculation that GCUK might be up for sale, however given that THUS didn’t get a better price, Global Crossing is probably not so […]