Spain’s main telco Telefónica


Spain’s main telco Telefónica is closer to an agreement with the country’s main media group Prisa/Sogecable to take a stake of 20% in Sogecable’s pay-TV operator Digital+. According to Telefónica’s president César Alierta “the conversations with Prisa are going the right way”.

Telefónica’s stake in Digital+ could be matched by the participation of another investor, which could take a similar stake in the satellite operator. Alierta said he would prefer the other partner not to be French group Vivendi due to the decision of Vivendi to compete with Telefónica in its second-largest market Brazil. Vivendi intends to take control of GVT, a Brazilian operator in which Telefónica is also interested.


With this declaration, César Alierta opens Digital+’s door to Italian media group Mediaset, which has already shown interest in entering the Spanish pay-TV market to complement its control of Spanish terrestrial channel Telecinco. The interest of the Italian media group is higher now that it has broken off its conversations with Prisa to exploit a likely integration with Sogecable’s free-to-air national channel Cuatro. The Spanish group did not want to cede the Italian company the management of advertising and content despite the higher value of Telecinco’s capital in an exchange of shares.


In order to ease the entrance of Telefónica in Digital+, Prisa has come up with a valuation of the platform of around €2,000 million - almost the same amount as Telefónica values Digital+ at. Digital+ could be valued €2,880 million according to the banks. Out of this amount should be taken €890 million of Sogecable’s debt in order to reach an equity figure of €1,990 million.