Bharti Telecom, promoter firm of Bharti Airtel, will acquire additional 4.62 per cent at market price in the telecom major on or after November 3, as per a regulatory filing.

Bharti Telecom will acquire 184,710,183 equity shares of Bharti Airtel from another promoter firm of the telecom major, Indian Continent Investment (ICIL), at price of Rs 417.35 per share derived with weighted average market price of 60 days trading period, as per the filing. With this transaction, Bharti Telecom stake in the company will increase to 50.1 per cent from 45.48 per cent and ICIL stake will come down to 2.03 per cent. “The acquirer confirms that the acquisition price would not be higher by more than 25 per cent of the price computed in point 6 (which is Rs 417.35 a unit),” the filing said. This implies transaction in the books of Bharti Telecom and ICIL will be to the tune of around Rs 7,700-9,600 crore.

Meanwhile, mobile tower firm Bharti Infratel said it will explore options to acquire country’s largest telecom infrastructure firm Indus Towers.

For this transaction between Bharti Telecom and Bharti Airtel, sources said, there will be no cash outgo for the Bharti Group and is being done for accounting and financial reporting purposes.
Shares of Bharti Airtel closed at Rs 492.8 on Monday, up by 1.59 per cent, on BSE.

“The board of directors of Bharti Infratel, in their meeting held on October 30, has decided to explore and evaluate acquisition of stake in one or more tranches in Indus Towers with the aim of making it a subsidiary or wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Infratel,” the company said in a statement. Bharti Infratel and Vodafone India hold 42 per cent stake in Indus Towers and rest is held by Idea Cellular.

The deal, if it happens, will create India’s largest mobile tower company with about two and half times the size of its nearest rival BSNL, as per the industry figures.

The move comes at a time when its joint venture partners in Indus Towers — Vodafone and Idea Cellular — are in the process of merging their mobile business and exploring option to exit from telecom tower business.

Indus had 1,23,073 mobile towers and Bharti Infratel owned 39,264 towers on standalone basis at the end of September. Both the companies jointly command 40.8 per cent market share in terms of installed mobile tower base in the country. State-run BSNL has around 66,000 mobile towers at present. Complete acquisition of Indus Towers will give Bharti Infratel command to negotiate on rentals for putting mobile base stations on its towers when telecom operators are looking to expand their network coverage specially for providing high speed data services.

Shares of Bharti Infratel closed at Rs 429.9 a unit on the BSE on Monday.