Inwit Shares Plunge After Swisscom, Telecom Italia Team Up in Tower Venture

By Nina Kienle and Adria Calatayud

Inwit shares fell sharply after telecommunications operators Swisscom and Telecom Italia said they are teaming up to form a tower joint venture with the aim of building thousands of sites in Italy.

Shares in Inwit, an Italian telecom-tower specialist, fell as much as 26% in early European trading on Thursday and erased gains in the year to date. Swisscom shares were down 0.5% and Telecom Italia down 2.9%, in a session marked by broad-based losses across European stocks due to the war in the Middle East.

Swisscom's Fastweb + Vodafone and TIM plan to launch a venture aimed at developing and operating up to 6,000 new mobile tower sites in Italy to expand 5G networks, the companies said Thursday. The project will be structured initially as a 50-50 joint venture, but the partners intend to add third-party investors in the future.

Inwit, formally known as Infrastrutture Wireless Italiane, didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The company was spun out of TIM in 2020 and counts the former Italian telecom monopoly, as well as Fastweb + Vodafone, among its customers.

Fastweb + Vodafone and TIM will be the anchor tenants of the joint venture, they said. TIM added that the infrastructure will be open to third-party customers.

Funding for the project will come from a combination of equity from third-party investors and debt, Swisscom said.

The collaboration aims to improve efficiency and align costs with the European average, TIM said.

A plan to improve Italy's 5G networks in a cost-efficient way looks positive for Swisscom and TIM, making them stronger competitors and potentially leading to higher revenue, analysts at ING wrote in a research note. Nevertheless, the project will increase lease costs for both somewhat, they added.

Write to Nina Kienle at nina.kienle@wsj.com and to Adria Calatayud at adria.calatayud@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 19, 2026 05:34 ET (09:34 GMT)