Indus Towers elevates Anil Gupta to CTDO
The development follows top level changes at the publicly listed company, one of the largest tower suppliers in India, in recent months.
The development follows top level changes at the publicly listed company, one of the largest tower suppliers in India, in recent months.
Despite the Indian telecom operator's precarious financial condition, global network equipment vendors are likely to prefer working with Vi, which still has more than 200 million users, but needs to urgently expand 4G network capacity and also start 5G rollouts to compete effectively with bigger rivals Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.
Over 12 months, Vodafone Idea has lost 120 basis points revenue market share to 15.6 per cent versus gain of 50-90 basis points share by Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel.
At the same time, the battery engineering lab with the development of Battery Management System (BMS) ensures safe and reliable battery performance in diverse applications.
Vi has said the funds may be raised in one or more tranches by way of a rights issue, a further public offer or a private placement among multiple options under evaluation, the loss-making telco said in the customary exchange filing on Thursday.
After the latest transaction, Artisan Partners' shareholding in Indus Towers declined to 0.47% stake from 1.71%.
Back in March 2017, a consortium of KKR and CPPIB had paid around Rs 6,194 crore for a 10.3% stake in Bharti Infratel, at Rs 325 apiece. Bharti Infratel subsequently merged into Indus Towers in end-2020, with the consortium getting a 6% stake in the combined entity. The two had since increased their combined holding to 7.04% - 4.85% for KKR and 2.19% for CPPIB.
"Vi repaid Rs 1,900 crore of external dues (versus Rs 400-500 crore according to original schedule) and repaid Rs 1,300 crore of vendor overdues from the cash generation in 3QFY24 and income tax refunds," stock research firm Kotak Institutional Equities said in a report on Tuesday.
He said Vi – India’s only loss-making private sector carrier – is in discussions with various technology partners for finalisation of its 5G rollout and is also working with partners to develop India-relevant 5G use cases and build device ecosystems. “We are also in advanced stages of 5G trials of embracing new technologies such as vRAN & ORAN,” Moondra said.
As per Citi Research, after the latest payments, Vi’s old dues to Indus is now at Rs 5,700 crore. But, industry insiders, said this is most likely excluding the interest component on the past dues. Indus did not immediately respond to ET’s query on the total interest component on Vi’s backlog of past dues.
Indus’ leadership, though, remained non-committal on dividend payouts amid improved collections from Vi, saying any board decision could be taken only by end-FY24, post-evaluation of collection trends and its impact on the tower company’s free cash flow (FCF) situation.