Bharti Airtel board meet on January 28 to explore fundraise via preferential issue

Bharti Airtel, India’s second-largest telco, has said its board will meet on January 28 to consider raising funds via a preferential share issue to investors other than its promoter group.
The move, analysts say, could be to accommodate a “global strategic investor”, which would strengthen the telco’s financials ahead of a 5G spectrum auction mid-year and expected top dollar investments in the roll out of the next generation technology.

“A meeting of the board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on Friday, January 28, 2022, to, inter-alia, consider and evaluate the proposal for issuance of equity shares through preferential issue (other than to promoter/promoter group), subject to all such regulatory/statutory approvals as may be required, including the approval of shareholders of the company,” Bharti Airtel said in an exchange filing on Monday.

At present, Airtel’s promoter group–the Mittal family and SingTel–hold 55.93% of the telco and the rest is held by the public. The Mittal family directly and indirectly owns around 24.13%, while SingTel holds 31.72%.

The Sunil Mittal-led telco’s latest fundraise plans have sparked speculation of a possible stake sale in Airtel to a strategic global investor as part of Bharti’s digital asset monetisation plans.

“The possibility of Airtel bringing a global strategic investor on board via a minority stake offer cannot be ruled out,” an analyst at a leading global brokerage told ET.

On the possible monetisation of Bharti’s digital assets, Mittal had previously said that any potential alliances or equity stake offers to key strategic global investors would only be through parent company, Airtel. This was in the aftermath of media speculation last year that US search giant Google was likely to make a substantial investment in Airtel, and that top executives of both companies were thrashing out the finer details of a potential mega alliance.

ET’s email query to Airtel remained unanswered till as of press time.

On Monday, Airtel’s shares closed 0.8% lower on the BSE at Rs 689.60. The fund-raising notice was sent to exchanges after market hours.

“Bharti Airtel is our top pick with leading ARPU (average revenue per user), 15% CAGR in consolidated Ebitda, comfortable gearing and stock at 7.5x FY23CL EV/Ebitda (13% discount to 5-year average,” said brokerage CLSA in a recent note. It reiterated a “buy” rating with a target price of Rs 910.

The carrier’s latest fund raise plan via a preferential issue also comes a few months after the its Rs 21,000-crore rights issue.

Last year, Airtel had raised around Rs 21,000 crore via a rights issue to use the proceeds to bolster its balance sheet and build a war chest to expand its 4G network and prepare for an upcoming 5G spectrum auction likely in April-May.

Earlier this month, though, Airtel abandoned its past plan of corporate restructuring to make telecom a separate unit under a parent digital business. It said it would continue to follow the existing corporate structure, where the digital business is part of the overall telecom business. The telco had attributed its decision to the recent telecom reforms that had made the proposed changes redundan