The African subsidiary of Indian telecoms giant Bharti Airtel has announced that it has priced its shares at US$99.6 (80 pence)
As reported earlier by Communications Africa, Airtel Africa Ltd has announced that the company’s market capitalisation will be approximately US$3.9bn upon completion of the offer (including the over-allocation option).
Raghunath Mandava, CEO of Airtel Africa said, “We are delighted by the strong response we have received from the many high-quality investors from around the world.”
“This is a proud moment for the team that has built Airtel Africa into the second largest mobile operator in Africa. We are now the first telecom company to simultaneously list on the Premium segment of the London Stock Exchange and Nigerian Stock Exchange through an IPO. We welcome our new investors and look forward to continuing to execute our strategy and deliver the growth opportunities across our markets in voice, data and mobile money,” he added.
The telecom company stated that the offer was oversubscribed with strong interest from a variety of reputable global investors across the UK, the US, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The offer comprises 744,047,619 new shares amounting to total offer size of approximately US$750mn and representing about 19 per cent of the company’s issued share capital.
The offer also came with a secondary listing on the Nigeria Stock Exchange with meaningful allocations to Nigerian investors.
Airtel Africa further added that the offer includes 67,640,692 new shares in the company which are being made available pursuant to the over-allotment option and which, if exercised in full would account for approximately US$68mn of the offered size.
Following the completion of the offer, Airtel Africa is expecting to be eligible for inclusion in the FTSE UK indices.
