Bharti may list telecom equiment company
Bharti may list telecom equiment company
PTI
New Delhi: The Bharti Group said on 18 March it may consider an initial public offering (IPO) for its telecom equipment company but ruled out going public for the retail, agri and finance businesses for at least five years.
“We will not go public for any of the businesses till they mature...The only company that might be a candidate for an IPO in the near future is Bharti Teletech," Sunil Mittal, chairman and group managing director, said in an interview.
Bharti has announced an investment plan of close to $12 billion (Rs52,000 crore) spread over the next 5-7 years, with $8 billion (Rs36,000 crore) in telecom by 2010, $2 billion (Rs9,000 crore) in retail and up to Rs1,500 crore in the financial services.
Asked about the source of funds and reason for not going public, Mittal said, “We are a virtually debt-free company and therefore bringing investments is not a problem.
“As far as going public is concerned, I feel its my job to put risk capital first and once the risk is diminished or eliminated then we can go to capital market," he added.
Bharti Teletech has been manufacturing basic phones and has two production facilities in Ludhiana and Goa with a total capacity of about 6.5 million phones a year.
The company last year achieved a milestone of producing 30-millionth phone and is targetting to double the export to 1.5 million units this year.
The company produces phones under the Beetel brand name.
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