Airtel Africa Ltd, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd, has appointed global banks to work on an IPO on an international stock exchange.
The banks appointed are J.P. Morgan, Citigroup, BofA Merrill Lynch, Absa Group Ltd, Barclays Bank PLC, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs International and Standard Bank Group, the company said in a statement.
This follows the recent subscription of shares in Airtel Africa by six leading global investors comprising Warburg Pincus, Temasek, Singtel, SoftBank Group International and others for an aggregate consideration of $1.25 billion. Earlier this month, Airtel Africa had also announced its newly constituted board of directors that includes representatives from Bharti Airtel and investors.
The financial performance of Airtel Africa continues to improve, having turned positive in terms of net profit and operating free cash flow. As reported in October 2018 Quarterly Report, during the second quarter ended September 30, 2018, Airtel Africa’s revenues grew in constant currency by 10.8 per cent Y-o-Y, led by growth in data and Airtel money transactions.
Mobile data traffic expanded by 53 per cent to 89 billion MBs Y-o-Y. While data customer base increased by 32.1 per cent to 27.1 million, Airtel Money customer base increased to 12.9 million, boosting the total transaction value on Airtel Money platform by 31 per cent to $6.3 billion. The company also witnessed an improvement of EBITDA margin by 3.9 per cent Y-o-Y to 37.1 per cent, it said.
Airtel Africa Ltd is a pan-African telecommunications company with operations in 14 countries across Africa. Its product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless voice and data services and mobile commerce through ‘Airtel Money’.