Bharti Infratel is reportedly planning to acquire telecom towers of Vodafone and Idea Cellular in India at a valuation of Rs 50 billion. These acquisitions are likely to be funded by the Rs 76.46 billion worth capital raised by the company by March 2014. At present, the tower portfolio of Vodafone is 25,000 towers, while Idea owns 9,446 towers in the country.
Meanwhile, the company is also looking for telecom tower acquisition opportunities in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. The company has recently entered into discussion with Abu Dhabi-based Etisalat for buying their operations in Sri Lanka. Bharti Infratel’s parent company Bharti Airtel already has a presence in Sri Lanka and holds seven per cent market share in the country.
Bharti Infratel currently holds 84,000 towers across India and in the quarter ended September 2014, the company made addition of about 4,000 tenancies. It has also recently signed tower sharing agreements with Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited to support the latter?s 4G roll-outs.
