The Hindu : Business : Warburg sells stake in Bharti Tele-Ventures

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Saturday, Aug 14, 2004

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Business

Warburg sells stake in Bharti Tele-Ventures

By Our Special Correspondent

HYDERABAD, AUG. 13. Warburg Pincus, one of the foreign shareholders of Bharti Tele-Ventures, sold $200 million worth shares yesterday (to some blue chip financers), out of its total holding of $1.2 billion worth shares. Terming the sale as `healthy', the Chairman and group Managing Director, Sunil Bharti Mittal, said it demonstrated the company's depth in the market. Normally, foreign institutional investors such as Warburg sell after 3-4 years of investment, but in this instance sale was in the sixth year.

On the proposed ADR issue, he said as promoters Bharti would not participate in it. The issue for up to 200 million equity shares (valued at about $700 million) was cleared by the board on July 23, and was to be taken up by the annual general meeting later this month, he said.

Mr. Mittal felt happy at the way things were evolving in the telecom sector including the regulatory angle, and said all major issued had been resolved. The sector was in fact giving momentum to associate industries also.

More base stations

"We will add more base stations. What we did for eight years, we will do in this one year", he said reflective of the optimism on growth potential. Delhi and Punjab circles have cross the one million mark each, and Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka were next in line, he said. Mr. Mittal is bullish on the high growth rates of the mobile segment continuing for some more years, and feels that the company can touch a subscriber base of 25 million in 3-4 years from eight million (8.73 million including fixed line) as of June-end.

Customer care service

Addressing a press conference here on Friday after inaugurating AirTel's customer care service, Mr. Mittal said India was set to see a `blazing growth' in mobile telephony and in 5-6 years, it could see a 150-200 million subscriber base. By the year-end he expected this to be 50-60 million.

He pointed out that there were only six companies globally with over 25 million subscriber base, and India could also see further consolidation with a `mega merger'.

India also has six major players but he predicted consolidation to five through a `mega merger'. However Bharti Tele was not looking for any acquisitions right now, not even BPL or Spice, which are expected to be taken over by some major players, he said.

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