Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest operator by subscribers, has divested 67.53 million shares of its telecom tower subsidiary Bharti Infratel for about Rs 2,570 crore (more than $400 million).
On Monday, sources told BusinessLine that the company’s share sale to institutional investors will open on Tuesday morning. [READ: Bharti Airtel seeks to sell 4% in tower arm for $400 million ]
The transaction was through a secondary share sale on the stock markets, and was executed at Rs 380.6 per share, a discount of about 4 per cent to the previous day’s closing price, it said in a statement.
Nettle Infrastructure Investments Ltd, a unit of Bharti Airtel, was the company that sold the shares.
JPMorgan and UBS were joint placement agents for the transaction, according to the term sheet for the stake sale.
Bharti Airtel will primarily use the proceeds from this sale to reduce its debt. Following the closure of this transaction, Bharti Airtel and its wholly owned subsidiaries together have an equity holding of 58 per cent in Bharti Infratel.
The allocation was done to global tower company investors, fund managers and long only funds, including many repeat investors.
The move by Airtel was to pare its net debt, which stood at Rs 87,840 crore as of June end. In March, a consortium of KKR & Co. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) acquired a 10.3 per cent in Bharti Infratel for about Rs 6,193 crore.