stc sold 51% of its tower company TAWAL to PIF at a $5.85bn valuation

For most of its life, stc's passive tower estate was a depreciation line inside a phone company's accounts. In 2018 the operator separated the towers into TAWAL, which by 2023 owned more than 16,000 sites. The point of the carve-out was not accounting tidiness: tower portfolios were being valued by infrastructure investors at multiples no telco multiple would support, and a standalone company could sell capacity to rivals instead of hoarding it.

TAWAL then scaled before any sale. In April 2023 it agreed to pay $1.34bn for United Group's 4,800-plus towers in Bulgaria, Croatia and Slovenia, wrapped in a 20-year master service agreement — its first move into Europe. PIF had already made a non-binding offer for 51% of the business, at a reported value near $6bn.

The definitive terms landed in April 2024: PIF acquired 51% of TAWAL from stc at a $5.85bn valuation, and TAWAL was consolidated with GLIC, the tower vehicle holding Zain KSA's sites, into a new entity owned 54% by PIF, 43.1% by stc and the remainder by GLIC minorities — the largest tower company in the region.

The merged company became the largest telecom tower company in the region. By mid-2026 it owned more than 30,000 towers across Saudi Arabia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Pakistan and Slovenia, carried an enterprise value of nearly $6bn, and was reported to be in talks to buy more than 10,000 more towers from Mobily — a deal that would give it near-monopoly control of Saudi tower infrastructure — ahead of an IPO targeted for 2027-28.

PIF paid $5.85bn for 51% in April 2024; the merged company now runs 30,000+ towers in five countries, with an IPO expected in 2027–28.

Passive infrastructure sat inside stc as a cost line, while global tower companies traded at valuations the same steel could never earn inside a telecom P&L.

Tower economics run on scale and tenancy: TAWAL's $1.34bn United Group acquisition added 4,800 towers and a 20-year contracted revenue stream before stc sold down.

Only a sovereign backer could fund a $5.85bn control purchase, and PIF wanted a domestic digital-infrastructure platform, not merely a dividend yield.

Merging GLIC's Zain KSA towers into the new entity eliminated duplicate national networks and left one tower company where Saudi Arabia previously had three.

Infrastructure that a carrier books as a cost center trades at growth multiples once separated — but the separation only pays if the carved-out unit is scaled into new markets before the control sale.

The PIF-stc transaction closed in the second half of 2024 as planned. In July 2026 Semafor reported TAWAL holding 30,000-plus towers across five countries, an enterprise value near $6bn, advanced talks over Mobily's 10,000-plus sites, and IPO preparation targeting 2027-28 — the next step in PIF's push to monetize the platforms it has built. stc kept a 43.1% stake in the enlarged company plus the cash from the sale, while its former cost center became a region-defining infrastructure asset it no longer controls.