How has your journey been so far at Vantage Towers? What challenges have you experienced along the way?
I’ve been CFO of Vantage Towers since its founding in 2020. I was also interim CEO until Christian Hillabrant joined us recently. Prior to that, I held numerous CFO and board positions across Vodafone Group and gained invaluable international experience working with Vodafone in Germany, Japan, Romania, Ireland, the UK and India. India was a market with quite a few strategic challenges as it’s a very complex and extremely fast-growing market with its own specifics.
What are you most proud of?
Carving out Vantage Towers from Vodafone that involved setting up a fully functional new organisation remotely, in 2020, during COVID-19. Then, taking it to a very successful initial public offering at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. And now, having successfully completed the sale of Vodafone’s stake in Vantage Towers to a consortium between KKR, GIP and Vodafone, we created quite a lot of value and will continue to drive it further.
How would you motivate people who want to join the towers industry?
Our industry offers many opportunities as we continue to expand – with digitalisation and digital infrastructure as the main drivers. There’s a lot of exciting work to do in the future. Vantage Towers is a leading player in the industry and our teams operate in diverse and international environments.
How can you enable more women to join the sector and leadership teams?
Currently, we have 36 different nationalities and 41% of our employees are female. Additionally, 37% of women hold leadership positions and we’ll continue to improve on this. Another aspect of our inclusivity is that we recognise and celebrate diversity. We have a participative management style; we empower our employees by enabling them to actively participate in the company. We prioritise the development of our people, helping them reach their full potential. And, if you think about the products we offer, they’re highly relevant to society as connectivity impacts people’s lives. Each of us at Vantage Towers identifies with the meaningful work we do.
Both investors and customers are redoubling their focus on sustainability. However, it comes in many forms. What are your environmental, social and governance (ESG) priorities and how are you making an impact?
ESG is at the core of our strategy. Vantage Towers’ mission is to accelerate Europe’s digital transformation through our superior network of assets. Our management team works on robust governance frameworks to ensure that we create a positive social impact on the long-term. Our innovative approach of sharing infrastructure reduces not only our own environmental footprint but also those of our customers as well. On the energy front, we are piloting micro energy production with solar panels or micro wind turbines. We’re also working on enhancing the efficiency of our batteries for the benefit of our customers and the environment as well. For example, in Hungary, we installed electric vehicle (EV) chargers at the bottom of a mast.
With 5G rollouts accelerating worldwide, what impact do you expect this to have on tower builds and new tenancies? How is your company adapting to the demands of 5G networks?
We see a growing demand from our customers to upgrade the towers where we’re already present. We’re supporting customers with improving their active equipment in these locations. We’ll accelerate the upgrades across all our locations. Beyond these processes, we expect to continue densifying our networks, as the deployment of 5G frequencies and increasing data demand have created a need for this. This is an opportunity for us to deploy more towers and rooftops, further strengthening our networks.
What are your plans for securing your infrastructure in these challenging times for the energy and supply chain industries?
Indeed, energy prices are on the rise, and inflationary trends have affected both our industry and society. We already started to industrialise our business by standardising towers and adopting a modular approach to deliver our towers. We closely monitor the steel price and hedging and try everything to get inflationary trends buffed. This way, we can continue to offer valuable services for our customers. Furthermore, we have improved our logistics
How is your towerco leveraging automation and AI to streamline management and operations?
This is a significant area for us. Since our inception, we prioritised the improvement of our IT processes. We successfully implemented tower infrastructure management systems to effectively manage our assets base. We did this both for our customers and co-workers, so they can capture all important elements in the process. Automation is a key feature we increasingly lean on. We’re currently exploring how AI can help us serve our customers better and be more cost efficient at the same time.
How are you expanding your offerings beyond traditional tower services? Are you planning to change your business model to attract more customers?
There are several services that we’re exploring to help us expand our revenue base. We already have quite a few customers who offer IoT services on our towers. Regarding hosting and edge computing, we initiated proof of concepts that will enable us to extend our business into adjacencies.
What opportunities do you see in the new digital infrastructure verticals, for example, non-traditional tenants, private network, IoT, satellite services or working with local governments?
Hosting non-traditional tenants, such as sensor businesses, and providing location-based solutions for customers who offer tracking services is a success story for us. We believe that there’ll be even more opportunities for us in the future, since broader spectrum offering and hosting is very feasible with our high-quality assets. While the revenue generated from these non-traditional tenants may not match the revenues from our mobile network operator (MNO) customers, it does contribute to our expansion and brings in additional revenue streams.
Are you working with customers or governments on any new connectivity programmes to improve access for unconnected individuals and communities?
One of our focus areas involves collaborating with MNOs and governments to deploy services into white spot areas in different countries. We aim to improve the lives of the unconnected by providing data services that were previously unavailable to them. Our innovative solutions include putting up towers in remote areas not covered in the past due to geographical challenges. Recently, we successfully deployed a wooden tower in Germany in partnership with the Finnish start-up, Ecotelligent. Previously, there was resistance to deploy a tower in that space but, eventually, the idea of a sustainable mast was accepted by the local community and authorities. Another successful example is our construction of a tower on Cape Clear – an island with 200 residents, 13 km off the coast of Ireland. This project has improved the lives of locals and clearly shows our positive impact on society and the environment.
The industry has been growing and changing constantly. What’s your strategic vision for your towerco for the next five years?
We already have a very strong asset base with presence in eight countries and two joint ventures in Italy and the UK. The quality of our assets is what differentiates us and enables us to be a leading digital infrastructure provider across Europe. The core of our business model is the sharing of our infrastructure. Not only does it contribute to our core values but it also aligns with our ESG goals as well. And as we continue to evolve our service offering, we’ll try to make use of our assets in adjacent areas.
Source: The Top 20 Tower Industry Executives: TowerXchange Exclusive
