24.03.2022   Articles . Communication Infrastructure

Article IPE Real Assets: Investment opportunities in communication infrastructure

 
 
Investment opportunities in communication infrastructure: digital connectivity and infrastructure are key to innovation & education. The growing need for fast broadband ‘connectivity’ in society and the economy requires a reliable, affordable, energy efficient and scalable state-of-the art communications infrastructure network.
Investment opportunities in communication infrastructure: digital connectivity and infrastructure are key to innovation & education. The growing need for fast broadband ‘connectivity’ in society and the economy requires a reliable, affordable, energy efficient and scalable state-of-the art communications infrastructure network.

To accommodate this, considerable investments are needed to expand and upgrade today’s communication infrastructure network. This opens up an attractive new asset class for institutional investors: passive telecommunications infrastructure assets – such as fixed-line cabling, mobile towers and data centers. An article by Primevest Capital Partners, a pan-European investment boutique with more than €3 billion AuM specialising in innovative real assets and already active in this field with the ‘Primevest Communication Infrastructure Fund I’ (PCIF) and PCIF II to be launched in April 2022, outlines the communication industry’s investment challenge and the window of opportunity it offers to institutional investors.

Long investment horizons
These communication infrastructure assets have lifecycles and utility-like characteristics with long investment horizons and can offer modest but reliable cash returns to institutional investors, backed by long-term lease contracts with telecom operators. Moreover, by introducing private capital to the world of communication infrastructure, institutional investors can play a vital role in the development of the ‘digital economy’, thus delivering important economic and social benefits. However, investing in cable infrastructure nowadays effectively means putting one’s money on one specific infrastructure asset: fibre-optics. That might seem a risky thing to do in an era of fast technological change and ‘disruption’, even if the exposure to technological developments is limited for institutional investors because they would not be investing in the telecom operators themselves. Can institutional investors invest in passive telecommunication infrastructure in the confidence that fibre-optic assets have the ‘longevity’ that not only provides investors with an attractive cash return during the lease term, but also maintains or even grows long-term capital value? Primevest explains that such confidence would be justified: fibre-optic.

Read full article here.

Primevest Capital Partners also has a White Paper available about this topic. If you would like to receive this extended version please send an inquiry to lisette.vanderham@primevestcp.com