Bharti IPO raises Rs 834 cr. at floor price

NEW DELHI: Telecom company Bharti Tele-Ventures said on Sunday it had priced its initial public offering (IPO) at Rs 45 a share, raising Rs 834 crore to fund its ambitious expansion plans.

The 185.3-million-share IPO, the first by a private Indian mobile operator, received subscriptions for over 2.5 times the number of shares on offer, the company said in a statement.

The IPO, representing 10 percent of the company's capital, opened for subscription on January 28 and closed on February 2.

The firm, a key holding company of New Delhi-based telecom conglomerate Bharti Enterprises, is expected to be one of the dominate firms in the telecom sector in India, said to be one of the world's biggest telecom markets this decade.

Bharti which had set a floor price of Rs 45 a share for the issue whose pricing was decided after a book-building process, said in a statement most of the demand came at a higher price of between Rs 46-48 a share.

"The total demand at a price of Rs 47 per share was at 259.1 million shares, while the demand at Rs 46 per share was 398.8 million shares...," it said. "The company, in the interest of all the investors, has decided to fix the issue price at Rs 45 per share in consultation with the book running lead managers, JM Morgan Stanley and DSP Merrill Lynch."

Bharti, in which Singapore Telecom and Warburg Pincus hold key minority stakes, runs six mobile and two fixed-line networks, broadband services and a national long distance telephone service in India.

It holds government licences to start nine more mobile and three fixed-line networks this year. Bharti's IPO is the first successful offering in India in nearly a year and is expected to breathe life into the moribund primary market.

The company, which received over 25,000 applications for its shares, had reserved 60 percent of the IPO for institutional investors including local and foreign funds, 15 percent to corporates and expatriate Indians and the remaining 25 percent for retail investors.