ACS and its subsidiary Abertis concluded the sale of its SH-288 highway to USA for 1.7 billion dollars (1,568 million euros), after the Texas government decided to nationalize it thanks to this compensation.
The transfer of this operation took place on October 8, when the Ministry of Transport of Texas announced that the termination of the contract between the parties was completed, emphasizing that the real value of the asset is $4,000 million (3,690 million euros).
An unprecedented ACS purchase
“This type of purchase is unprecedented in the USA and it’s a big victory for the drivers of SH-288 and our taxpayers,” said the executive director of this public organization, Marc D. Williams.
The State thus assumes the operation of the highway, until now operated by the Blueridge consortium, 56.8% controlled by Abertis (equal shares by ACS and the Italian Mundys) and 43.2% by Iridium, the concessionary subsidiary of Florentino Pérez’s company.
In any event, the termination of the contract, net of provisions and other results, including that of Abertis, will not have a significant impact on the consolidated net income expected for 2024 of the ACS group.
Although it is one of the group’s most important assets in the world, due to its great potential for revaluation, ACS will be able to partially compensate for this loss with the recent allocation of the highway SR-400in this case in the state of Georgia, which will involve an investment of 4 billion dollars (3,690 million euros), and from which we hope to generate a return of 15%.
For its part, Abertis was recently entrusted with the management of Pepper of the Route 5 Santiago-Los Vilos through its subsidiary in the country, VíasChile, of which the Spanish company controls 80%, with an investment of around 1,000 million euros.
The argument put forward by Government of Texas nationalize the highway is that it will soon be able to lower tolls and that it will even be able to add new free lanes in the metropolitan area of Houston.
