Idea completes sale of standalone towers to ATC for Rs 4,000 crore

MUMBAI: Idea Cellular on Thursday said that it has completed the sale of its standalone 9,900 towers to to ATC Telecom Infrastructure Private Limited (ATC) for Rs 4,000 crore. The sale was done via the Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned telco divesting its entire stake in Idea Cellular Infrastructure Services, a 100% subsidiary of Idea, to ATC. Closure of the captive towers deal with Idea will conclude the Boston-based telecom tower company’s two-stage acquisition of Vodafone India and Idea’s near 20,000-odd combined standalone towers for a total of Rs 7,850 crore. Vodafone's sale of its standalone tower business to ATC was completed for an enterprise value of Rs 3,850 crore in April. According to a regulatory filing, post the completion of Vodafone India and Idea merger, the 6,300 co-located tenancies of the two operators on the combined standalone tower portfolio will collapse into single tenancies over a period of two years without the payment of exit penalties. In the last leg of regulatory approvals, the merger of the second and third largest telecom companies in India is expected shortly. Idea Cellular added that both the telcos and ATC as a vendor "have agreed to treat each other as long-term preferred partners, subject to existing arrangements". At a time when the Indian telecom market is seeing an upsurge in 4G network rollouts, the buyout of Vodafone and Idea’s captive towers will boost ATC’s towers portfolio in India to nearly 80,000, taking it closer to market leader Indus Towers and Bharti Infratel who own 1,23,639 and 91,451 towers, respectively. The Birla-owned company said that the receipt of both these proceeds prior to completion was anticipated and provided for, in the Vodafone India and Idea merger agreement and hence would not affect the agreed terms of the merger, including the amount of debt which Vodafone will contribute to the combined entity at the closing of merger transaction.

from The Economic Times https://ift.tt/2slTDfk