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“Deal closure is likely to happen early next week once the transaction is concluded and ATC transfers the $615 million to Idea,” a person with direct knowledge told ET.
Under the terms of the deal, Idea will sell its entire stake in wholly-owned arm, Idea Cellular Infrastructure Services (ICISL) —which holds standalone towers —to ATC Telecom Infrastructure (ATC TIPL) for $615 mn in cash. Idea shares rose over 5% on the BSE to close at Rs 59.70 on Friday, a day after the DoT cleared its captive towers sale to ATC. At press-time Friday, Idea and ATC did not reply to ET’s queries.
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 Rs 7,850 crore.
Last month, the government had cleared Vodafone India’s sale of its 10,926 captive towers to ATC for Rs 3,850 crore.
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 Boston-based independent tower operator has been steadily reinforcing its India towers portfolio, having bought a 51% stake in erstwhile Viom Networks for Rs 7,635 crore in the largest inbound acquisition back in FY16.
Last November, Vodafone India and Idea had announced plans to sell their respective captive towers to ATC for Rs 7,850 crore ($1.2 billion) in cash, in a move aimed at paring debt in the run-up to their mega merger.
Vodafone India and Idea, which are combining to form the country’s biggest phone company by revenue and subscribers, are slated to close their merger next month.
In November, ATC had said the three sides had established a preferred partner structure under which Vodafone and Idea would receive service-level and process efficiency benefits, while ATC TIPL would secure certain preferential rights for future new business commencements on its existing portfolio and on the sites being acquired in certain Indian markets.
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