AT&T agrees to sell its Mexico business to Televisa and Fintech for $2 billion

AT&T agreed on Tuesday to sell its Mexico wireless business to Grupo Televisa and Fintech Holdings for $2 billion in cash at closing, about $1.2 billion less than the cash it paid to enter Mexico in 2015. The agreement also includes benefits AT&T did not describe or value, so the cash is not the full price.

AT&T's 2015 annual report records the two purchases that built the business. It bought GSF Telecom, which operated as Iusacell and Unefon, in January for $2.5 billion, including about $700 million of net debt, and Nextel Mexico in April for $1.875 billion, including about $427 million of net debt and other adjustments. The cash was what remained, about $3.2 billion.

The $1.2 billion compares cash paid in 2015 with cash due at closing. Closing adjustments can still move the $2 billion, the 2015 prices leave out later spending on the network, and those prices are not the value of the business on the books today.

The business is a small part of AT&T, and it has only recently made money. It had 23.4 million wireless subscribers at the end of June 2026, most of them prepaid. In 2025 it was about 3% of the company's segment revenue and less than 1% of segment operating income, AT&T said in its annual report.

Operating income was $40 million in 2024 and $145 million in 2025, on $4.4 billion of revenue. EBITDA for 2025, operating income plus depreciation and amortization, was $816 million. On that measure, the $2 billion is about 2.5 times EBITDA, not a rich price for a wireless network.

In the first half of 2026 the unit earned $58 million of operating income on $2.4 billion of revenue. The operating margin was 2.4%, down from 4.4% a year earlier.

AT&T called the unit Mexico's second scaled wireless network and said the next phase of growth is better left to a local operator. The network ahead of it is Telcel, the wireless business of América Móvil, Carlos Slim's telecom group. In March 2025, Mexico's telecom regulator counted 83.3 million lines there, more than at any other mobile operator.

Grupo Televisa is a broadcaster. AT&T said it brings a fixed-line broadband business, and that Fintech Holdings brings capital, local knowledge and operational expertise in the Mexican wireless sector. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Fintech Holdings is led by billionaire David Martínez and that the two buyers will own the venture equally.

John Stankey, AT&T's chairman and chief executive, said the sale is consistent with focusing the company's capital on growth in the U.S. market.

The company expects to close in the first quarter of 2027, subject to customary conditions, including any necessary regulatory approvals in Mexico. AT&T said the sale will not change service for its customers in the United States. Until then it will keep Mexico inside its continuing results and classify the business as held for sale, the label for a unit it has agreed to sell and still owns.

That treatment will appear in its third-quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AT&T reports third-quarter results on October 21.