(Fixes typo in company name in paragraph 6)
By Andres Gonzalez, Amy-Jo Crowley and Paul Sandle
LONDON, March 11 (Reuters) - The chief executive of Cellnex, Europe's largest mobile phone tower operator, said volatile markets in the wake of the Middle East conflict meant consolidation in the sector would not happen as quickly as he had previously expected.
Marco Patuano said he was open to a potential revival of the sale of Cellnex’s Swiss operations, which he said was halted last year after bids fell
short of expectations.
"Nothing in our portfolio is untouchable," provided the company receives a suitable offer, he told Reuters in an interview.
"In order to make consolidation, you need that the environmental conditions, financial markets, are okay, and this is not very much the case today," he said.
Patuano has raised in the past the possibility of reviving his predecessor's 2022 bid for Deutsche Telekom's towers business - now known as GD Towers. He said that he has not recently held talks about it with the German company.
He said mergers among telecom tower companies remained necessary, especially if deals like French telecom groups Orange, Bouygues Telecom and Free's bid for rival SFR reduce the number of Cellnex's clients in Europe.
Patuano noted that the impact from the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran will be mainly from potentially higher interest rates as the company has 20 billion euros ($23 billion) of debt.
Oil prices are up nearly 50% since the start of the year on the war, likely pushing inflation higher and raising pressure on the European Central Bank to step in to curb price pressures.
Patuano said Cellnex has completed the asset sales it needed and refinanced its near‑term debt maturities, giving him confidence in the Spanish company's strategy even if market sentiment remains weak.
Cellnex's market capitalisation has halved since its peak of about 40 billion euros ($46 billion) in 2021 as investors fretted about its debt and the potential consolidation of its clients, mobile network operators.
"It's the entire sector that is at this moment suffering more than being a company specific element," Patuano said.
'DEFENCE IS NOT ONLY ROCKETS'
As defence spending has increased in Europe, Patuano has been urging governments to classify telecom networks as strategic defence assets.
"Defence is not only rockets and missiles and bombs. Defence is also being able to stay connected if something wrong has happened," he said, adding he delivers this message weekly in government meetings.
For example, he said governments could forgo fees from the renewal of spectrum licences and encourage companies to invest instead in communication networks.
($1 = 0.8641 euros)
(Reporting by Andres Gonzalez; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
