Once again France Telecom has stated that the company is looking for medium-sized acquisitions in emerging markets. But this time, CFO Gervais Pellissier has added the critical fact that some investments should be announced in the coming months.
"I can't tell you the names of the countries we are working on. There will be a few more acquisitions on the African, Middle East footprint in the next couple of months," Pellissier siad. He added that if the Indian mobile operator Bharti wanted to sell some of the African assets it recently bought from Middle-Eastern operator Zain, France Telecom may be interested.
Dampening hopes for infrastructure vendors, Pellissier revealed that the company has no plans to increase its capex as a proportion of sales in the coming years to cope with the increase in mobile data traffic. "There will be no increase in the future because we still see a reduction in the price of the equipment. Also we will continue progressively to decrease our spending on 2G, which is still very high in some countries notably for maintenance."
For more on this story:
- see this Reuters article
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