Reuters: Verizon to auction data centers
by January 6, 2016 10:09 pm 146 views
Verizon Communications Inc. has started a process to sell its data center assets, hoping to fetch more than $2.5 billion, people familiar with the matter told Reuters in a news story on Tuesday.
A sale would represent the latest effort by Verizon, the No. 1 U.S. wireless carrier, to streamline its portfolio following a divestment last year of a chunk of its landline business and a portfolio of wireless towers, the article said.
The so-called ‘colocation’ portfolio up for sale includes 48 data centers, and generates annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of around $275 million, one of the people said.
Verizon also initially explored a sale of a larger portion of its enterprise business, including the former MCI assets, but could not reach an agreement with a buyer. It held discussions with wireline provider CenturyLink Inc. last year for its enterprise business, Reuters reported in November.
In late October, Bloomberg News reported that Verizon planned to reduce its 20 regional offices down to six. Verizon operates a state-of-the-art data center at its regional headquarters in Little Rock – the outgrowth of the company’s $28 billion acquisition of Alltel Corp. in 2009.
The wireless company added 300 jobs to its Little Rock regional campus in 2014 and completed a $30 million expansion and renovation in 2012 that company officials said at the time would put the campus’ employee count at over 2,000.