Saudi wealth fund PIF takes stake in Jio Platforms for ₹11,367 crore

NEW DELHI: Jio Platforms has signed up Public Investment Fund (PIF) as its tenth foreign investor in just over 8 weeks. The Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund will pick up 2.32% stake in the Reliance Industries subsidiary for Rs11,367 crore ($1.5 billion), a release issued by the Mukesh Ambani company said today.

The latest investment, like most of the previous ones, gives Jio Platforms an equity valuation of Rs4.91 trillion and an enterprise value of Rs5.16 trillion.

This takes the total investment by foreign investors in Jio Platforms to Rs1.15 trillion rupees for a 24.71% combined stake in the company.

Besides PIF, the list of 10 investors in Jio now includes Facebook; six private equity companies namely General Atlantic, TPG, KKR, Silver Lake, L Catterton, Vista Equity Partners and two sovereign funds of Abu Dhabi -- Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and Mubadala Investment Company.

The first and the largest stake sale of all was that of 9.99% equity to Facebook for Rs43,573.62 crore, announced on 22 April.

Silver Lake invested in Jio in two installments. All the transactions are subject to regulatory approvals, with the one with Facebook likely to undergo a tighter scrutiny given concerns over net neutrality. The deal with Facebook is currently under scrutiny at the Competition Commission of India, the antitrust watchdog.

Reliance Jio Infocomm, which provides connectivity platform to over 388 million subscribers, will continue to be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jio Platforms.

The stake sales are part of RIL's plan to be debt-free by March. Most likely, the target is likely to be achieved by December, the parent company having mopped up Rs53,124 crore from a rights issue that closed on 4 June.

Of the Rs43,574 crore that it will receive from Facebook, Jio plans to use Rs28,000 crore to redeem optionally convertible preference shares (OCPS) of its parent RIL and retain Rs15,000 crore in its books, Jio's top management had said in a conference call on 22 April.