Vodafone dejará de ingresar hasta 1.100 millones de euros tras la salida de Patrick Drahi de su filial alemana de fibra

Vodafone Group will cease receiving over €1.1 billion in potential payments following Patrick Drahi's exit from their German fiber optic joint venture, OXG Glasfaser Beteiligungs-GmbH, according to Financial Times. The British telecommunications group was entitled to receive €487 million in delayed payments and up to an additional €595 million contingent upon operational and commercial targets met by Drahi's subsidiary, Geodesia Holding.

The total forecasted earnings amounted to €1.082 billion. Société Générale agreed to acquire the 50% stake previously held by Altice in OXG earlier this September, but the French bank will not be subject to the same financial obligations held by the Franco-Israeli entrepreneur, according to sources familiar with the transaction cited by the British wire service.

Vodafone has not informed investors of this change in contractual terms. A Vodafone spokesperson stated that the decision to initially partner with Drahi offered "the best option between the certainty of financing deployment and strategic flexibility, which was reflected in the agreed terms." The company added that it supports Altice's exit and the substitution of Société Générale as a committed investor.

When Vodafone and Altice created OXG in 2023, Drahi was grappling with the impact of rising interest rates on the accumulated debt in his telecom conglomerate. New Street Research analyst James Ratzer pointed out that Drahi's choice as a partner proved to be a mistake and expressed surprise at Vodafone's decision to forgo these funds, noting that Drahi's guarantees were renewed the previous year and he will receive liquidity following the agreed sale of French operator SFR for €20.35 billion.

Drahi's stake in OXG had come under scrutiny by Altice's creditors after the investor transferred his German subsidiary's stake out of the reach of lenders to whom it owes €8 billion. OXG had originally committed to investing €7 billion to deploy fiber optic broadband to over 7 million households in Germany over six years. The increase in construction costs hampered the work, reaching around 1 million homes by September 2026.

The first delayed payment depended on surpassing 1.5 million homes, and Vodafone did not anticipate receiving revenues until the 2028 fiscal year. The income adjustment coincides with an adverse regulatory scenario for Vodafone in Germany. The European Court of Justice ruled that EU legislation does not automatically grant operators the legal right to unilaterally modify the general terms of contracts.

The ruling will obligate the group to reimburse the €5 monthly tariff increase applied to its German broadband customers in 2023, an estimated cost by New Street Research between €100 and €200 million. Vodafone Group's shareholder structure, which divested its Spanish subsidiary in 2024, saw parallel changes following the increase in Xavier Niel's stake from 16% to 19%, consolidating him as the company's largest shareholder on the FTSE 100. Altice declined to comment on the agreement.