US communications provider Lumen Technologies struck a $2.7 billion deal with investment company Stonepeak to sell-off its Latin American business, a move which raises capital to accelerate investment in other growth areas.

Lumen, which provides integrated communications services to residential and business customers, explained in a joint statement its Latin American business would now operate as an independent US-headquartered division of Stonepeak.

Despite the change in ownership, Stonepeak will retain Lumen’s leadership team and its organisation will remain in place, led by current president for the region Hector Alonso.

Lumen will also retain a strategic relationship with the new company and continue to serve customers in the region.

In practice, this will see Lumen provide its customers in North America, EMEA and APAC with needs in Latin America with services, which includes reciprocal reselling and network arrangements employing respective fibre footprints, data centres and other network assets.

Lumen explained the deal generates income from an attractive asset at nine-times the businesses’ 2020 adjusted EBITDA, with plans use the sum raised to invest in unspecified growth areas along with enabling greater flexibility on capital allocation, allowing for debt reduction and continued evaluation of share repurchases.

For Stonepeak, the company is keen to tap into Lumen’s extensive subsea, terrestrial fibre and data centre footprint across Latin America.

Earlier this month, Lumen expanded a partnership with T-Mobile US to service domestic government agencies, helping the operator to grow its fixed wireless access and edge compute capabilities.