Airtel may sell mobile towers in Nigeria for about $550 mn

Telecom major Bharti Airtel is expected to sell-off mobile towers in Nigeria, biggest revenue generating market for the company in Africa, for USD 500-550 million by April, industry sources said.
The company has less than 4,000 mobile towers in the African country.
When contacted Airtel spokesperson said: "As a company policy, we do not comment on market speculation."
The company, meanwhile, is learnt to be looking at selling off its mobile tower asset in Africa for about USD 2 billion to pay off its huge debts.
The net debt of the company at the end of September 2013 was at Rs 60,877 crore.

Nigeria contributed about 30 per cent revenue to Airtel's Africa business in 2012-13 fiscal. Overall, the company had about 14,000 mobile towers in Africa across 17 countries at the end of March 2013.

The company has been making efforts to bring down its debt and finance costs related to it.
On January 13, the company raised about Rs 2,100 crore from euro bonds, mainly to lower finance cost of its debt.
For the July-September quarter of 2013-14 fiscal, Airtel reported wider net loss from the African business to USD 105 million, from USD 97 million in the same quarter of 2012-13 fiscal.

Its Africa revenue increased 2 per cent to USD 1.12 billion from USD 1.09 billion.