Bharti Airtel shares advance over 2% on acquisition of Tikona’s 4G biz

NEW DELHI: Shares of Bharti Airtel advanced as much as 2.84 per cent in early trade on Friday after the telecom major announced that it will acquire 4G business of Tikona Networks, including broadband spectrum and 350 sites across 5 circles, for about Rs 1,600 crore

The scrip was trading 1.34 per cent up at Rs 342.95. Shares of the company opened at Rs 341.60 and touched a high and low of Rs 348 and Rs 341.15, respectively, in trade so far. Benchmark BSE Sensex was trading 64.82 points, or 0.22 per cent, up at 29,396.98.

"Bharti Airtel shall acquire the 4G busienss of Tikona" for "approximately Rs 1,600 crore for the transaction," the company said in a regulatory filing.

Tikona currently has 20 MHz spectrum in the 2,300 MHz band in Gujarat, UP (East), UP (West), Rajasthan and Himachal Pradesh circles.

With this acquisition, Airtel will be the second company, after Reliance Jio, in the country to have pan-India presence in 2300 Mhz band— which has second largest ecosystem of 4G devices.


Gopal Vittal, MD and CEO (India & South Asia), Bharti Airtel in a release said, “We believe that combining our capacities in TD-LTE and FD-LTE will further bolster our network and help us provide unmatched high-speed wireless broadband experience to our customers.”