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Bharti Airtel, the country’s largest telecom company by subscribers, has offloaded 83 million shares of its telecom tower subsidiary Bharti Infratel through a secondary share sale in the stock market for ₹3,325 crore.
The sale, conducted through its wholly-owned subsidiary Nettle Infrastructure Investments, was executed at ₹400.6 a share. This is at about a 3.6 per cent discount to the previous day’s closing price, the company said in a statement.
The stake was offered to global investors, fund managers and long only funds, including many repeat investors. The deal, buoyant on healthy investor appetite, was upsized by over 25 per cent, it added.
Airtel will use the proceeds to primarily reduce its debt. Following the closure of this transaction, Bharti Airtel and its wholly-owned subsidiaries’ stake in Bharti Infratel is at 53.51 per cent. JP Morgan, UBS and Goldman Sachs were joint placement agents for the transaction.
The New Delhi-based Bharti Airtel, which had a debt of about ₹91,480 crore as of September end, has been monetising its stake in the tower firm to pare debt.
Bharti Airtel shares closed flat, at ₹498.05, on the BSE, which ended down 0.28 per cent on Tuesday.
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