Singaporean telecommunications conglomerate Singtel Group is selling its stake in Bharti Airtel.
Prior to completion of the sale, Singtel has an effective stake of approximately 31.4% in Airtel. After the sale of 198 million shares, Singtel’s effective stake in the telecom will decrease to 29.7%.
According to the company, the partial divestment of the Singtel Group’s actual stake in Bharti Airtel is a key component of the company’s overall capital recycling strategy and underlines its capital management initiatives to rebalance and optimise its portfolio of investments in investee companies in the telecommunications industry.
According to Singtel, this is in line with its objective to crystallise and unlock value from its latent assets in order to finance new growth engines and enhance total shareholder return.
The largest telecom business in Southeast Asia, Singtel, said in a statement today that it would sell the stake to Bharti Telecom Ltd, a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises Ltd.
The sale and transfer of the sale will be executed any time before 23 November 2022 and the aggregate consideration will be approximately SGD2.25 billion (around ₹12,900 crore).
Singtel is concentrating on 5G operations and looking for new growth engines, therefore it has been simplifying its portfolio. It is reportedly considering options for disposing of an advertising platform, including selling Trustwave Holdings Inc., a cyber security company, and even selling a stake in some fibre assets.
Vodafone Group Plc is reportedly selling off some of its operations, and NTT Ltd. of Japan is rumoured to be considering selling its majority ownership in an IT services company.
The transaction will place us in a strong position to expand our dividends in a sustainable fashion, according to Arthur Lang, Singtel’s global chief financial officer, in addition to funding 5G and growth in the coming years.
