Idea Cellular to raise Rs 2000 crore more to fund 4G expansion in India

Idea Cellular on Tuesday informed the stock exchanges that it is planning to raise Rs 2,000 crore from the market by selling corporate bonds or issuance of unsecured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (“NCDs”). The telco had earlier raised a total of Rs 3,000 crore through the same route.

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Earlier this month, Idea raised Rs 1000 crore and Rs 500 crore by selling corporate bonds. It had last month raised Rs 1,500 crore via the same route.

The telco said that its bonds will offer 8.4% interest per annum with five-year tenure. The NCDs will be listed on National Stock Exchange on January 27, 2017.

“In terms of provisions of of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Listing Obligations and disclosure requirements ) regulation, 2015, we wish to inform you that the company is proposing to issue unsecured Redeemable Non-Convertible Debentures (“NCDs”) amounting to Rs 2,000 crore on private placement basis,” the company said in a notification to stock exchanges.

Idea Cellular will use the proceeds for capital expenditure as the telco is looking to expand in its 4G network.
Idea Cellular had acquired an additional 2×74.6 MHz spectrum in FDD technology on 1800 and 2100 bands, and 200 MHz spectrum in TDD technology on 2300 and 2500 bands during the spectrum sale in September 2016.

It earlier said that it will expand 4G services to nine circles to take their wireless broadband footprint to 20 circles by March 2017 . It plans to add nearly 57,000 sites this year to enable the launch of 4G in circles of UP West, UP East, Gujarat, Mumbai, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Assam and Jammu & Kashmir where spectrum was acquired in the auctions ended last month.