If reports are to be believed, India’s largest mobile phone company in terms of subscriber base and revenue, Bharti Airtel is all set to sell stakes in its landline and enterprise business, in a bid to ease its mounting debt burden of Rs 63,839 crore.
As reported by Economic Times, the company is looking at an enterprise valuation of about Rs 17,000 crore for its fixed line unit and about Rs 6,500 crore for its enterprise business. Although the exact percentage of stake has not been decided yet, but it will be less than 50%, a person familiar with the development said. The company will first sell the stake in its fixed line business followed by the enterprise business after 12-18 months.
In the past, Airtel sold 5% stake to Doha-based Qatar Foundation in order to raise Rs 6,796 crore. Additionally, the telco had also raised Rs 8,094 crore through bonds in the March quarter to cut its debt. The sales in its Enterprise arm grew 19% accounting for revenues close to Rs. 5,320 crore in the year ended March 2013 while in DTH segment the sales grew 26% with revenues of Rs. 1,630. The telco’s earnings before interests, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBIDTA), which is an approx measure of a company’s operating cash flow was Rs. 936 crore for its enterprise segment in the last fiscal.
