American Tower Corp has acquired Tata Teleservices’ near 13% residual stake in ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt Ltd for roughly Rs 2,500 crore in an all-cash deal, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told ET.
The deal — at roughly Rs 212 per share — marks the exit of Tata Group from the consumer mobility and related businesses.
The group is in the final stages of selling Tata Teleservices’ consumer mobility business to Bharti AirtelNSE 0.66 %.
With this, the Boston-based independent tower firm now owns nearly 90% in ATC Telecom Infrastructure, one of the persons cited above told ET.
Macquarie-controlled funds are reckoned to own the balance 10% shares.
Tata Teleservices, the telecom arm of Tata Group, is learnt to have apprised the telecom department (DoT) about the stake sale to ATC. The company had the option to sell its balance shares in ATC Telecom Infrastructure at the start of this fiscal.
ATC and Tata Tele did not reply to ET’s queries as of press time Wednesday.
Shares of Tata Tele (Maharashtra), the listed arm of TTSL, were down a tad over 1%. at Rs 2.93 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Wednesday.
ATC had in October last year bought nearly half of Tata Tele’s original 26% stake in ATC Telecom Infra along with IDFC’s 2% for a total consideration of Rs 2,940 crore. But since Tata Tele had paid $320 million, or around Rs 2,400 crore as a onetime cash settlement to ATC for prematurely winding up of some 30,000 tenancies after deciding to sell its mobility business to Bharti Airtel, the tower firm effectively spent only about Rs 540 crore for 15% stake.
The NYSE-listed tower company had in 2015 acquired nearly a 51% stake in erstwhile Viom Networks from Tata TeleservicesNSE 1.69 % and SREI Infrastructure Finance for Rs 7,635 crore. TTSL’s stake in Viom Networks came down to 26% after ATC became the major stakeholder and merged its Indian businesses.
The US firm then had 63% stake in the merged entity christened ATC Telecom Infrastructure, which is now the second-largest private telecom tower firm in the country with a base of some 80,000 towers.
ATC has made huge bets in India, expanding its towers portfolio aggressively through acquisitions. But rapid consolidation in the telecom market, amid continuing price wars, had hurt the company.
Last year, ATC had said its operational and financial results in the third quarter of 2018 were impacted by churn driven by the carrier consolidation process.
Source: Economic Times