Tower infrastructure company Bharti Infratel, a wholly owned subsidiary of telecom services provider Bharti Airtel Limited, today agreed to divest 7.5 to 9 per cent to a clutch of international investors for $1 billion (Rs 4,000 crore).
While Singapore-based Temasek Holdings will be the largest investor, the other players include the Investment Corporation of Dubai (ICD), Goldman Sachs, Macquarie, AIF Capital, Citigroup and India Equity Partners (IEP).
Temasek also holds a stake in Bharti Airtel.
The deal puts the tower company’s enterprise value at $10 billion to $12.5 billion (Rs 40,000 crore to Rs 50,000 crore), but the final valuation will be determined on the basis of Bharti Infratel’s actual operating performance in FY 2008-09.
Bharti Infratel owns close to 20,000 sites in seven circles and holds approximately a 42 per cent stake in Indus Towers, the recently announced joint venture between Bharti, Vodafone and Idea, which has over 70,000 sites.
As part of the joint venture Bharti Infratel had recently transferred 30,000 towers in 16 circles to Indus recently. Indus plans to scale up to 20,000 towers in the next two to three years.
With the market for mobile services growing at 3 million subscribers a month, tower infrastructure companies have seen their valuations soaring in recent months.
Indus Towers is valued at around Rs 150,000 crore and controls over 70,000 towers. Reliance Communications was able to divest 5 per cent in its tower company to seven investors for Rs 1,400 crore, giving it an enterprise value of Rs 27,000 crore.
The company controlled over 13,000 towers when the deal was struck. It is looking at another divestment of 5 per cent but this time it is looking at an enterprise value of $9 billion on 16,000 towers.
Even the Ruias have got into the business and have floated a separate tower company with 4,000 towers. The Tatas have also set up an independent tower company.
No comments:
Post a Comment