Morrison & Co leads A$3b bid for Aussie telco infrastructure firm Uniti Group

Paul Newfield, who joined Morrison & Co in 2008, was named as the investment manager's new chief executive from the start of 2022. Photo / Supplied

Morrison & Co has made a A$3.1 billion bid on behalf of un-named funds for Uniti Group, an ASX-listed telecommunications infrastructure and services firm.

Uniti was placed in a trading halt at 1pm local time, with its shares at A$4.01, after the possible deal was leaked to Australian media.

In a later statement, the company confirmed it had received an indicative cash offer from Morrison & Co "on behalf of its managed funds and clients" of A$4.50 per share - for a valuation of A$3.1b.

The pair are now in exclusive, non-binding talks until April 22 - although Uniti can talk to another party before then if it pays Morrison & Co a A$5m break fee.

Morrison's un-named clients in the deal are said to be a mix of Australian superannuation funds, plus the Australian Government's Future Fund.

Wellington-based Morrison & Co is best known as the manager of the ASX and NZX-listed Infratil (market cap $5.7b), which holds a half-share in Vodafone NZ. All up, it manages around $21.5b in infrastructure investments.

If the Uniti deal goes ahead, it will be Morrison & Co's third Australian telco infrastructure play. In 2016, Infratil acquired a 48 per cent stake in Canberra Data Centres. And last year, Morrison & Co teamed with Australian super funds and the Future Fund to buy 49 per cent of Telstra's mobile towers business.

Telco infrastructure has emerged as a hot area in Australasia over the past 12 months. Spark is weighing a partial sale of its celltower network, while Vodafone NZ is assessing a full-spinoff of its towers.

Uniti was formed by a group of ex-M2 executives in 2019, and has grown through a series of acquisitions. It owns fibre and wireless networks that offer the only major private alternative to Australia's Government-owned and run National Broadband Network (NBN) - albeit with less coverage. Its operations are centred on cherry-picked areas of the east coast. Greenfield housing developments are point of focus.

Last year, Uniti made a net profit of A$29.2m (from the year-ago A$15.9m) as revenue rose from A$58.2m to A$160.5m - with the jump driven by its acquisitions of fibre network builder OptiComm for A$694m and its A$140m purchase of Telstra's "Velocity" fibre-to-the-premise business.

Morrison & Co declined to comment.