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Dutch telecoms group KPN said Thursday it has been given the green light to sell Belgian mobile phone operator BASE to cable group Telenet in a 1.3 billion-euro ($1.5 billion) deal.
The transaction will allow Telenet, owned by US giant Liberty Global, to reinforce its fixed line and internet services in Belgium and take ownership of BASE’s mobile network.
“KPN has been informed that the European Commission has approved the sale of BASE to Telenet,” it said in The Hague.
“Completion of the transaction is expected in the coming days,” KPN added in the statement.
The Dutch operator announced in April last year it was selling BASE — Belgium’s third-largest mobile operator — for 1.33 billion euros ($1.48 billion), subject to regulatory approval.
Telenet at the time said it would invest 240 million euros in coming years, some of which would go towards facilitating BASE’s integration and to further develop its mobile infrastructure.
That funding would come atop 500 million euros in investment funds previously set aside to upgrade Telenet’s hybrid fibre/coax network to boost client connection speed.
KPN is expected to reap some 900 million euros in cash after deductions, of which 70 percent will be distributed to shareholders in the form of a capital repayment, KPN said.
The cash distribution from selling BASE will be combined with a capital repayment announced earlier following KPN’s sale of 150 million shares in Telefonica Deutschland in November.
KPN on Wednesday reported a doubling of net profit to 524 million euros thanks to the Telefonica shares sale, even though overall turnover continued a year-on-year slide.
A former state-owned company that was privatised in 1994, KPN employs about 25,000 people worldwide.
But it is due to cut around 2,000 to 2,500 jobs before the end of 2016 in a bid to shave some 450 million euros from its overall costs.
In December, British mobile giant Vodafone said it was suing KPN for some 115 million euros, accusing it of trying to lock it out of the Dutch market.
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