CenturyLink has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its data centres and colocation business to funds advised by BC Partners, in a consortium including Medina Capital Advisors and Longview Asset Management. In exchange, CenturyLink will receive USD2.15 billion in cash, subject to offsets for capital lease obligations and various working capital and other adjustments, plus a minority stake to be valued at USD150 million in the consortium’s newly-formed global secure infrastructure company. CenturyLink plans to use the net proceeds from this sale to partly fund its acquisition of Level 3 Communications announced on 31 October.
Under the terms of the agreement, the BC Partners/Medina-led consortium will assume ownership of CenturyLink’s portfolio of 57 data centres at closing. CenturyLink says it will continue to focus on offering customers a wide range of IT services and solutions, including network, managed hosting and cloud. Though it will no longer own the data centres, CenturyLink will continue to offer colocation services as part of its product portfolio through its commercial relationships to be entered into at closing with the BC Partners/Medina-led consortium, subject to regulatory approvals.