Lehman, Spinnaker pick up stake in Spice Telecom

NEW DELHI: A clutch of investors led by Lehman Brothers and Spinnaker Investments are learnt to have picked up a small stake in Spice Telecom for about $30 million, as part of the pre-IPO placements by the cellular service provider.

It is estimated that these investors will pick up a fifth of the nearly 138 million shares that will issued in the IPO at about Rs 45 per share. However, the exact figure will be known only after Spice Telecom sets its price band during its broad meeting, which is slated to be held early this week.

Importantly, this also implies that any talks of merger or acquisition with Idea Cellular will continue only after Spice’s IPO as reported by ET earlier. A possible reason for this is that the listing will ensure a robust price discovery process for the company, which is currently believed to be valued at about $1 billion. Besides, any merger post-IPO will also ensure a cashless swap of equity.

According to sources close to the development, this will be the only pre-IPO placement that will be made by Spice Telecom. Sources also added that the company was targeting an issue date of June 18. Investment banker Lazard is one of the advisors to Spice Telecom for its upcoming IPO.

Last month, Spice Telecom had got the stock market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India’s (Sebi) nod for its Rs 600 crore IPO.

However, last week Sebi had raised some observations on the Spice’s draft prospectus, which in turn led to the company to withdraw its offer document. Spice sources told ET that these “were just formal observations, while adding the company would file a revised prospectus by Wednesday (June 6), and was targeting the third week of June for the float of its shares”.

Spice will be offloading nearly 138 million shares, equivalent to 20% of its enlarged capital base. Following the IPO, the stakes of the Modis and Telekom Malaysia, which is currently at 51% and 49%, will fall by 10% each. This implies, post-IPO, the Modis will have about 41% while Telekom Malaysia 39%.

Spice currently has 2.8 million subscribers and has operations in two telecom circles — Karnataka and Punjab. While the company is yet to finalise the pricing details of its shares, it will have to sell them at Rs 45.80 each to meet its target of raising Rs 600 crore.