Germany’s Deutsche Telekom poised to gain majority control over T-Mobile US

Deutsche Telekom (DT) stands to gain around $10.9 billion from the recent sale of a stake in its European cell tower business. The company is widely expected to use that money to gain a majority stake in T-Mobile in the US.

“Deutsche Telekom has been steadily increasing its stake in T-Mobile US and currently sits at ~48% ownership,” noted the financial analysts at Raymond James in a recent note to investors. “With the capital received from the GD Towers deal [DT] should be well on the path to taking majority control of T-Mobile via the shares sale agreement with SoftBank. And we do not expect DT to sell any T-Mobile shares when T-Mobile US begins its stock buyback program by 2023.”

DT late last week said that it would sell 51% of its tower business to a consortium of Canada’s Brookfield and US private equity firm DigitalBridge.

DT CEO Tim Höttges has been relatively explicit about his desire for majority control over T-Mobile in the US. For example, in 2021, he announced deals that helped raise DT’s stake in T-Mobile US by 5.3% to 48.4%. As Reuters noted at the time, T-Mobile US accounted for fully three-fifths of DT’s sales and was its most profitable unit.

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