BENGALURU, July 17 (Reuters) – Belgium’s Proximus Opal, which provides cloud-based telecom platforms for enterprises, said on Monday it would buy a nearly 58% stake in Route Mobile ( ROUT.NS ) for about 59.22 billion rupees ($721 million). ), at par with the current market value of its Indian counterpart.
Proximus Opal, a unit of Belgian telecom service provider Proximus Group, has customers such as Salesforce and Bytedance, while Route Mobile’s customers include Amazon and Indian telecom service provider Airtel.
Proximus Opal will pay 1,626.40 rupees per Route Mobile share, just 0.06% above Friday’s closing price, for the 57.56% stake held by the promoters of Route Mobile, an Indian market term for large shareholders who can influence company policy.
However, Clear Bridge Ventures, an affiliate of several Route Mobile promoters, will acquire a minority stake of up to 14.5% in Proximus Opal for approximately 299.6 million euros (almost $337 million).
Proximus Opal will also have to make an offer to buy an additional stake of up to 26% in Route Mobile at the same price from retail shareholders, according to Indian regulations.
“The partnership … paves the way for Route Mobile to reach a billion dollar annual revenue rate much faster than the projected 3-4 year timeline,” said Rajdip Gupta, CEO of Route Mobile, who will also run the combined company. the company.
Route Mobile’s revenue rose 78% to 35.69 billion rupees ($434.5 million) in the year ended March 31, while its profit nearly doubled to 3.27 billion rupees.
The company’s shares fell nearly 4% to 1,562.60 rupees in afternoon trading in India, reversing course after initially jumping 8.3% to a 17-month high. The stock is up about 150% since its market debut in September 2020.
Morgan Stanley was the financial advisor to Proximus. ($1 = 82.1570 Indian rupees) ($1 = 0.8910 euros)
Reporting by Rama Venkat and Sethuraman NR in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Janane Venkatraman
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