Debt-ridden Reliance Communications (RCom) has received shareholders approval for monetisation of its assets with an overwhelming 99.91 per cent majority.
Under its asset sales plan, the Anil Ambani group company would sell its wireless assets to Reliance Jio Infocomm, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Reliance Industries.
RCom’s asset monetisation is proceeding on a fast track to close by March 2018, subject to lenders’ consents and other regulatory approvals, the company said in a regulatory filing.
Post monetisation, the debt and liabilities of the company will reduce by about Rs 25,000 crore throught pre-payment of debts and transfer of Department of Telecommunications' spectrum instalments, it added.
The company’s total debt as of December 31, 2017, stood at Rs 45,000 crore.
RCom’s continuing operations will comprise stable and profitable B2B focused businesses, including Indian and global enterprise, Internet Data Centres and the largest private submarine cable network in the world.
These B2B businesses are stable, capital light and have sustained and predictable annuity revenues and profits, with an immense growth potential amid relatively low competitive intensity, the filing said.
Earlier on December 28, Mukesh Ambani-led RJio had said it would acquire the wireless assets of RCom, but did not divulge the financial details.
The company will acquire RCom’s more than 43,000 towers, 1.78-lakh route km of optical fibre cable network, 122.4 MHz of spectrum in the 800, 900, 1800 and 2100 MHz bands and 248 media convergence nodes. These assets are expected to contribute significantly to the large-scale roll-out of RJio’s wireless, fibre-to-home and enterprise services.
The monetisation of RCom’s assets was mandated by its lenders, who appointed SBI Capital Markets to run the process. It was supervised by an independent group of industry experts. RCom had said that the the transaction was expected to close in a phased manner between January and March 2018.