Brookfield leads XpFibre bid as Drahi sale nears €8bn

A roughly €8 billion ($9.4 billion) deal for Patrick Drahi’s XpFibre moved closer after Brookfield Asset Management Ltd. (BAM) emerged as the leading bidder for control of the French fibre operator, Bloomberg reported. The report cited people familiar with the matter, a reminder that the process remains private and could still shift before any signing.

For infrastructure investors, the auction gives a cleaner read on demand than most deal chatter. A Brookfield purchase near that valuation would show private capital is still willing to buy large fibre networks, even after higher rates made leveraged deals harder to finance. Dealmakers are watching the price and control package a buyer can defend, not just the name at the front of the bidding.

Drahi’s logic is balance-sheet repair as well as portfolio pruning. Altice France owns 50.01 per cent of XpFibre, according to Bloomberg’s report on the stake sale. The asset is large enough to matter in any European telecom auction: Data Center Dynamics reported earlier this year that XpFibre’s wholesale broadband network reaches 7 million premises in France. That gives bidders a national fibre platform rather than a bundle of smaller regional networks.

The bidding history points to a narrower but still active market. Data Center Dynamics said in May that several bidders had been shortlisted for the stake. Bloomberg’s later report that Brookfield moved ahead suggests telecom infrastructure still has buyers, though they are sorting harder on price, certainty and structure by the final rounds.

Why Brookfield can still pay

Financing has not become easy again. Brookfield’s lead instead suggests the largest alternative managers still have room for assets with long-dated demand and steadier cash flows than cyclical corporate targets. Fibre networks fit that mandate. They can be underwritten against wholesale access economics and network reach, not a quick rebound in discretionary spending.

That makes the XpFibre process a live test of whether infrastructure appetite has narrowed, or simply become more selective. A buyer taking control of the fibre business would give Drahi a monetisation event tied to an asset with its own industrial case, without asking the market to price the wider Altice story all at once. In a tougher funding environment, an asset-level disposal is easier to execute than a broader corporate sale. It is also easier for buyers to diligence, finance and take to investment committees.

Brookfield’s shares added little urgency to the read-through on Friday. The stock was down $1.04, or 2.15 per cent, at $47.44 in New York trading, according to Yahoo Finance data in the fact bundle. Equity investors did not appear to treat the auction report as a near-term earnings event. The more important message sits in the private market: a large infrastructure investor is still prepared to stay deep in a complex European fibre process.

What the auction says about fibre

An €8 billion enterprise value, majority control and a nationwide footprint make XpFibre a useful valuation marker for the sector. Buyers are not chasing an early-stage roll-out. They are looking at an established fibre platform with enough scale to matter in wholesale broadband and enough operational heft for financing or execution gains to affect returns. Closing risk remains. The final price or ownership mix may still differ from the current reporting.

Still, the underwriting case is clearer than it would be for a patchwork of smaller assets. European infrastructure sellers have spent the past two years testing how much dry powder was real after debt costs rose. The XpFibre process now suggests that large pools of capital did not disappear. They became choosier. A business with scale, a defined network footprint and a cleaner control package can still draw serious bidding, even if the last stretch of the auction is more exacting than it was when money was cheaper.

Bloomberg’s account of Brookfield’s lead points to an active auction that could resolve in coming weeks, while the earlier Data Center Dynamics report showed the field began with real competition. If Brookfield turns that edge into a signed deal, XpFibre will stand as a fresh marker that private capital still wants European fibre infrastructure, and that Drahi’s asset sales remain a useful barometer for appetite in the region’s deal market.