Bharti Global Roadshow For Ipo Next Week

Bharti Televentures Ltd, the telecom holding company of the Bharti group, is going in for an international roadshow to sell its initial public offering (IPO).

Company chairman Sunil Mittal, along with finance head Akhil Gupta and other top executives will be visiting New York, Boston, Washington, Edinburgh, London, Frankfurt, Singapore and Hong Kong to hold the roadshows.

The team, which is slated to kick off its roadshow some time next week, will be meeting top investors in these markets to push the IPO. "It will be held in all important cities," Mittal said.

Roadshows will also be held in 20 cities in India, wherever there is a stock exchange. The country's first telecom IPO is using the book-building route to arrive at a price of the shares.

It is offering 185,336,700 equity shares out of which 111,202,020 are reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 27,800,505 will be the non-institutional portion and the retail portion would be of 46,334,175 equity shares. The public offer comprises 10 per cent of the total equity of the company.

The company is expected to announce the reserve price for the share before it goes in for the roadshow.

Industry sources and bankers closely connected with the issue say that it is likely to be in the vicinity of Rs 55 a share, as the last private placement of shares in the company was undertaken at close to this price. Industry experts say that the company is expecting to raise over Rs 1,000 crore from the issue.

The cash will be used partly to fund the large expansion plan chalked out by the Bharti group which includes operations in nine new cellular circles, building a national long distance network, foray into international long distance and 5 new basic service circles.

To achieve these objectives, Mittal has to rustle up funds of over Rs 3,450 crore. The group companies have already put in over Rs 1,500 crore through a combination of debt, fresh infusion of equity and internal accruals and hopes that the balance will come from fresh borrowings, vendor financing and of course the crucial initial public offering from the group.

Bharti Televentures logged total revenues of Rs 848 crore as on March 31, 2001, with a net loss of Rs 104 crore in the same period.

The promoter's equity after the issue would go down from 51.56 per cent to 46.40 per cent. The equity holding of Warburg Pincus which is held through a investment company will go down from 20.6 per cent to 18.5 per cent and that of partners Singtel directly held in Bharti Televentures will go down from 17.7 per cent to 16 per cent post issue.