Bharti Airtel completes $10.7-b Zain Africa buy

09 Jun 2010 Evaluate

Bharti Airtel Ltd took a giant step towards becoming a global emerging market telecom operator by completing the acquisition of Zain Group's mobile operations in 15 countries across Africa. The deal, valued at $10.7 billion, is the biggest overseas acquisition by an Indian company. With this acquisition, Airtel is set to become a global brand with a footprint that covers over 1.8 billion people across 18 countries in Asia and Africa. Bharti is now the fifth largest mobile player in the world with a subscriber base of over 180 million. The transaction is the largest ever cross-border deal in emerging markets and will result in combined revenues of over $12.4 billion and EBITDA of over $4.7 billion, based on the last audited results.

Bharti has acquired the operations in Burkina Faso, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Zain is the market leader in 10 of the 15 countries and second in 4 countries. Bharti will launch the Airtel brand in all the 15 African nations in October. The company has set a target of 100 million subscribers and $5 billion revenue by 2012-13. Zain Africa has 42 million customers and $3.6 billion revenue.

Bharti has already paid $7.9 billion in cash to Zain. Over the next six months, Zain expects to receive an additional $400 million upon certain milestones being achieved. The balance of $700 million is due one year from completion of the acquisition. Bharti will also assume $1.7 billion of consolidated debt obligations, under the agreement between the two companies. Bharti had secured debt of up to $8.5 billion from a clutch of lenders to fund the deal and will have to bear $200 million interest cost each year for the acquisition.

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