The Scoop
TAWAL, the telecom tower company controlled by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, is in talks to acquire more than 10,000 sites from the kingdom’s second-largest mobile operator, according to people familiar with the matter.
The multibillion-dollar deal would involve Public Investment Fund-backed TAWAL buying the assets from Mobily, which is partly owned by the UAE’s state-controlled telecoms firm e&, the people said.
The transaction could be announced later this year if negotiations progress. Once completed, it would make TAWAL one of the region’s biggest telecom tower owners and give it monopoly power over the kingdom’s mobile tower infrastructure, the people said. TAWAL is then expected to start preparing for an IPO that could occur in 2027 or 2028, the people said.
Mobily, PIF, and TAWAL didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Know More
TAWAL owns more than 30,000 telecom towers across Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Pakistan, and Slovenia. The company had an enterprise value of nearly $6 billion after Saudi telco stc merged its own tower portfolio with TAWAL in 2024.
An IPO would mark another step in PIF’s push to monetize its domestic portfolio. The fund is trying to attract more investors into the companies and real estate developments it has created over the past decade, as it scales back spending on some of its biggest projects.