Telecom infrastructure company Indus Towers is set to merge with Bharti Infratel, to form the world’s largest tower company, outside China. The merger was announced by Bharti Airtel today. The combined entity will change its name to Indus Towers Ltd and will continue to be listed on the Indian Stock Exchanges. The merged entity will have over 163,000 towers and 367,000 tenancies across 22 telecom service areas in India. Indus Towers currently operates in 15 circles while Bharti Infratel is focused on the remaining 7 circles. In a statement, the companies said, “The combination of Bharti Infratel and Indus Towers, with their highly complementary footprints, will create a pan-India tower company with the ability to offer high-quality passive infrastructure services to all operators on a non-discriminatory basis, needed to support the pan-India expansion of wireless broadband services using 4G/4G+/5G technologies.” They said the combined company’s equity value would be Rs 965 billion (US$14.6bn). In the deal, the enterprise value of Indus Towers is at Rs 715 billion (US$10.8bn). For the year ended March 31, 2018, combined revenue of the companies was Rs 253,604 million (US$3,830m). Individually, revenue for Bharti Infratel was Rs 66,180 million (US$999m) and that of Indus Towers was Rs 187,424 million (US$2,830m). The merger ratio for the deal is 1,565 shares of Bharti Infratel for every one Indus Towers share. Ownership Indus Towers is jointly owned by Bharti Infratel (42%), Vodafone (42%), Idea Group (11.15%) and Providence (4.85%). Bharti Infratel is owned by Bharti Airtel with 53.5% shareholding. In…
