Airtel’s rights issue gets oversubscribed; acquisition of Tikona’s 4G assets completed

Bharti Airtel’s rights issue for over 1.13 billion shares has been oversubscribed as it has received bids for over 1.19 billion stocks. Airtel had floated a rights issue of up to 1,133,591,075 shares, aggregating over Rs 249.39 billion. The company plans to use the proceeds from the rights issue to reduce its debt of around Rs 1.15 trillion. The promoter group firms had also participated in the rights issues and the transactions led to a decline in the promoter group firms’ shareholding from 67.14 per cent in March 2019 to 62.71 per cent in May 2019. According to a regulatory filing, Bharti Airtel’s paid-up equity share capital has increased to Rs 25.65 billion, comprising about 5.13 billion fully paid-up equity shares, after the closure of its rights issue share allotment. Meanwhile, Airtel has also completed the acquisition of Tikona Digital’s 4G assets. This includes broadband spectrum and 350 sites across five circles. The deal size was about Rs 16 billion.