Airtel, a global telecom brand present across several nations, has two promoter groups - the Mittal Family and the Singtel Group. Now, in a new development, Singtel has announced that it will sell a minority stake in the company to the Mittal Family. Through a press release, Singtel announced that its wholly-owned subsidiaries have entered into a share purchase agreement for selling a 3.3% direct stake in Airtel to Bharti Telecom, a JV (joint venture) between Singtel and Bharti Enterprises. This can happen any time before November 23, 2022. Singtel would be getting SGD 2.25 billion or USD 1.6 billion out of this sale. The company said that it would make a profit of SGD 0.6 billion on this transaction. This move is in line with Singtel Group’s divestment plans or recycling strategy. Post the transaction is complete, Singtel Group’s holding in the telco would come down to 29.7% (estimated to be SGD 22 billion). The stake for the Mittal family would go up by 3.3% in the company. Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Enterprises, said, “Bharti Enterprises and Singtel have agreed to work towards equalising their effective stake in Airtel over time. Bharti Enterprises looks forward to working with Singtel over the long term in taking Airtel to an even greater position of success.” At the time of writing, Airtel’s shares are trading at Rs 745.10, almost 1% up on Thursday morning. The telco is soon expected to announce the rollout of commercial 5G networks in India. With 5G, Airtel is definitely going to see a boost in revenues as it would bring in more business as well as consumer use-cases to life which wasn’t possible with 4G.
