Bharti Telecom to buy 4.62% in Airtel at Rs 435.37 a share

NEW DELHI: Bharti Telecom, the promoter and holding company of Bharti Airtel, said it will buy 4.62% stake in India’s largest telecom operator from a group company —Indian Continent Investment Ltd (ICIL) — at Rs 435.37 per share, instead of the earlier stated Rs 417.35 apiece.

The telco in a regulatory filing on Thursday clarified that ‘the volume weighted average market price for a period of 60 trading days preceding the date of issuance of the said intimation (based on trades on NSE) has been inadvertently mentioned as Rs 417.35 per share instead of Rs 435.37 per share’.

The transaction could, therefore, be worth Rs 10,052 crore, according to the revised calculations. On Thursday, the Airtel stock closed 0.87% higher at Rs 543.10 on the BSE. In an earlier filing with the National Stock Exchange three days ago, the promoter firm said it would acquire 184,710,183 shares in Airtel from group company ICIL. The deal value would not be more than 25% of the stock’s 60-day weighted average price of Rs 417.35, the filing said. However, with the changed price share, the value of the transaction goes up.

The date of acquisition will be November 3 or after that. After the share transfer, Bharti Telecom will own 50.1% of Airtel, compared with 45.48% earlier.