French telecoms group Iliad has shortlisted infrastructure investors for the second phase of the sale of a stake in its data centre business OpCore, said sources familiar with the situation.

Antin Infrastructure Partners, InfraVia Capital Partners and Morrison have advanced into the final round after submitting initial offers towards the end of July, said the sources.

Iliad, Antin, InfraVia and Morrison declined to comment.

Iliad, which is working with RBC and Lazard as advisors, is set to launch the second phase of the auction in September, the sources added.

The investors are vying to take a stake in the business, which owns and operates 15 data centres with 31 MW of contracted capacity across France and Poland, including six key sites in and around Paris.

Iliad, which is set to keep a stake in the company, is looking for a partner to help fund Opcore’s plans to invest EUR 2.5bn in data centres in the next 10 years.

Opcore currently generates around EUR 35m of annual EBITDA, according to a teaser for the deal, and could fetch an enterprise value in the EUR 800m-1bn region, based on recent prices for data centre businesses.

The company expects to add a further 11 MW to reach EUR 52m of EBITDA by 2026 and has further capacity to grow up to 131 MW at its existing sites, the teaser also says.

The business benefits from a contract with Iliad and other two hyperscale customers for more than half of its capacity, with the rest contracted to smaller enterprise clients.

The three shortlisted bidders were among several infrastructure investors that eyed offers in the first round of the auction, Infralogic reported in July. Other possible suitors initially included BlackRock, Wren House, DigitalBridge, Brookfield and AXA.

InfraVia has already partnered with Iliad on two major fibre deals in France and Poland to co-invest in the network of the company led by Xavier Niel. It also invested in the Irish network of Eir, which is also controlled by Niel. The French fund manager is also a seasoned data centre investor, having invested in operators including Switzerland’s Green, which is also set to go on the block.

Morrison’s interest in the deal comes after the New Zealand-headquartered manager took part in the sale of a stake in the French data centre operations of Altice. The investor’s portfolio companies include UK data centre operator Kao Data.

Antin also has experience in the sector via Pulsant, another UK-based operator, and last year was among the suitors shortlisted to buy France’s Data4, which was ultimately acquired by Brookfield.

Opcore’s auction is progressing roughly at the same time as the sale of Spanish peer Nabiax by Asterion Infrastructure Partners. Finalists for Nabiax’s sale were also shortlisted recently and include Wren House, Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s data centre platform Global Compute Infrastructure, and Igneo Infrastructure Partners.