Quippo-WTTIL plans to sell 2-5 p.c. stake

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Indian telecom tower firm Quippo-WTTIL is looking to sell between 2 per cent and 5 percent stake to raise funds for growth, a director of the company said on Tuesday. "If there is right valuation, if minds meet, why not," Hemant Kanoria told reporters on the sidelines of an infrastructure conference. "There's no hurry for us to do it."

Quippo-WTTIL, a joint venture between India's Tata Tele and Quippo Telecom, was in talks with many investors including Macquarie-SBI Fund, set up by Australia's Macquarie and State Bank of India.

The Economic Times had said on Monday Macquarie-SBI Fund would buy a 10 percent stake in the tower firm for $310 million. Based on that valuation, Quippo-WTTIL can raise about $150 million by selling 5 per cent stake.

Kanoria said the stake sale at Quippo-WTTIL, which owns 39,000 telecom towers, would be of a "small extent" and that there was no need to rope in a strategic investor.

Carriers in India's cut-throat cellular sector, also the world's fastest-growing with more than 600 million users have been shedding their tower businesses and renting capacity to cut debt and lower costs.

Reliance Communications last month agreed to merge its towers business with that of GTL Infrastructure Ltd to create what it said would be the world's largest telecoms infrastructure firm.

Demand for tower assets is set to increase as winners in a recent licence auction start to roll out third-generation services.