Deutsche Telekom now has a 50.2% stake in T-Mobile US
Germany’s Deutsche Telekom (DT) has finally surpassed a 50% stake in T-Mobile US after years of steadily increasing its ownership in the American company. During a DT general meeting held this week, CEO Timotheus Hoettges shared that the company has been going after a majority stake in T-Mobile US since 2021. It now can claim a 50.2% stake.
“We have the majority and are the largest shareholder of the world’s most valuable telecommunications company – T-Mobile US,” Höttges said at the meeting, as reported by Reuters.
The value that Höttges referenced is no joke. Over the last 10 years, T-Mobile US’ value has increased by $167.44 billion, and 5G only presented further opportunity to shine, with the carrier’s next-generation network often considered the fastest and most pervasive in the U.S. by telecom analyst companies like Opensignal and Ookla.
DT’s ownership of T-Mobile US was diluted to 43% when the U.S. company merged with Sprint, as Sprint’s owner SoftBank took 24% of the combined entity. In 2022, Deutsche Telekom acquired 21.2 million shares from SoftBank for $2.4 billion, increasing its stake to 48.4%. The transaction left the Japanese company with about 39.7 million shares in T-Mobile, worth about $5.2 billion at the time.
For shareholders, specifically, Höttges said DT’s new position as majority stake holder will increase in value for the its shareholders by more than 70 billion euros. The transaction that put DT over the 50% threshold is estimated to have cost between $7.2 and $7.5 billion, but the company is confident that the benefits will ultimately outweigh this cost. And it has good reason to be. In 2021, Reuters reported T-Mobile US at the time accounted for three-fifths of DT’s sales and was its most profitable unit.
