Inwit: 'With Tim and Fastweb contracts valid until 2038'

Inwit is willing to sit down at the table to discuss with its two main customers, Tim and Fastweb-Vodafone, with whom (not irrelevant) differences of opinion have emerged on the application of the agreement (Msa, master service agreement) that regulates relations on the use of the network of towers for mobile telephony which, it should be remembered, for the most part are those that had conferred precisely Tim and Vodafone Italia, today not present in the shareholding structure of the infrastructure company. This is, however, on condition that the validity of the existing contracts is recognised, until 2038 according to Inwit, given that in 2022 there was a change of control that triggered automatic renewal for 16 years. If Fastweb were to terminate the contract by the end of this month in order to end the relationship in 2028, when according to the Swisscom operator its contract would instead expire, Inwit would be ready to urgently appeal to the court to protect its position and clarify the issue as soon as possible.

This, in brief, is what emerged from the conference call with analysts that Inwit's CEO Diego Galli held in the early morning after lowering the guidance for 2026 and the outlook for the coming years following the announcement by Tim and Fastweb-Vodafone of the signing of an agreement, for the time being non-binding, for the construction of 6,000 new towers on their own, to support the development of 5G.

In the statement, issued after the extraordinary board meeting to analyse the state of relations with the two customers, Inwit claims that, in its opinion, "Tim and Fastweb's attitude is the result of the latter's desire to obtain an unbalanced and unjustified revision of the original terms of the two MSAs signed at the time", that the announced initiative of the joint venture for the towers is "in clear contrast with the MSAs", and that the company "rejects in full the exceptions put forward by the anchor tenants in relation to the MSAs, their duration and their execution". But Inwit also says in its press release that its medium-term outlook (low single-digit annual revenue growth, annual capital expenditure of around EUR 200 million) "does not include the potential upside related to the re-establishment of a constructive relationship with the anchors (Tim and Fastweb, ed.) for the purposes of network development and innovation, the objective need for densification required by the continuous growth in data traffic, and the opportunity to expand along the digital infrastructure chain".

That is, one can talk about future developments, but - the statement reiterates - 'the MSAs are long-term contracts, the terms and conditions of which are an integral part of a unique and inseparable transaction completed in 2020', an operation that 'entailed for Inwit an initial investment of around EUR 10 billion for the purchase of the infrastructure held at the time by Tim and Vodafone Italia, guaranteeing an immediate and significant economic and financial benefit to the selling companies'.

The Msa, the press release states, 'provides that if the two operators need a new site to meet their roll-out plans, Inwit will be given the status of preferred supplier, with the consequent prohibition for operators to entrust the construction of new sites to third parties, without first allowing Inwit to exercise its preferential right (which provides for a last call), which would also operate against the announced joint venture'.