Bharti Airtel Ltd on Thursday said it has closed the $1 billion investment deal with Google International LLC, with the search giant holding 1.2% in India’s No. 2 telecom service provider.
The Sunil Mittal promoted company has allotted preferential shares amounting to over ₹5,224 crore to Google while the remaining $300 million will be invested through commercial agreements over the next five years.
“The ‘special committee of directors for preferential allotment of the company has approved the allotment of 71,176,839 equity shares of the face value of ₹5 each fully paid up, on preferential basis to Google International LLC (Google) at an issue price of ₹734 per equity share (including a premium of ₹729 per equity share),” the carrier said in a note to BSE on Thursday.
As an outcome, Google will hold about 1.2% of the total post-issue equity shares of the company, which is about 1.17% on a fully-diluted basis. The announcement follows approval from the Competition Commission of India last week.
Google had said in January that it will invest up to $1 billion in Airtel through an equity purchase of 1.28% for $700 million and a commercial agreement of $300 million on mutual terms over the next five years.
The investment follows Google’s $4.5 billion investment in Reliance Jio in July 2020, both from the Google for India Digitization Fund.