Bharti Airtel, India's second-largest telecom operator, has acquired an additional 1% stake in the telecom infra company Indus Towers. This happened as Vodafone UK offloaded an 18% stake in the tower company. Airtel is the largest stakeholder in Indus Towers. Before this, Airtel had a 47.95% stake, and now, it has increased to 48.95%.
In a release, Airtel said, "the ‘Special Committee of Directors for evaluation of stake in Subsidiaries and Joint Ventures’ has today i.e. on June 19, 2024, approved the acquisition of upto 27 million equity stake in Indus Towers Limited (‘Indus Towers’)."
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To be precise, Airtel acquired 26.95 million shares of Indus Towers from the market. There is no regulatory approval required for Airtel to make this purchase. It will be interesting to see if Airtel increases its stake in Indus Towers to more than 50% in the future.
Vodafone UK used to be a majority stakeholder in the tower company, but today, its remaining stake is only 3.1%. Airtel will also benefit if Indus Towers is performing well. For Indus Towers, it is crucial that Vodafone Idea (Vi) clears the past dues. While Vi has been clearing the regular payments without any delays, there is a huge backlog of dues that needs to be cleared.
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Indus Towers won't help Vi roll out new services such as 5G if it doesn't clear the previous payments. Bharti Airtel is the largest stakeholder in Indus Towers and would want Vi to pay the dues. Vi plans to roll out 5G during the winter of 2024. For that, the telco has raised plenty of money in the short-term and will require the help of Indus Towers as well as the network gear vendors such as Nokia and Ericsson.
