Airtel Africa appoints banks for IPO

Airtel Africa on Monday announced the appointment of global banks for its proposed IPO on an international stock exchange.
Airtel Africa in KenyaJP Morgan, Citigroup, BofA Merrill Lynch, Absa Group, Barclays Bank, BNP Paribas, Goldman Sachs International and Standard Bank Group will handle the IPO of the Bharti Airtel subsidiary.

The company is yet to reveal the offer size the timing of the IPO. Airtel Africa will use the IPO proceeds to cut its debt.

Recently, investors including Warburg Pincus, Temasek, Singtel, SoftBank Group and others invested $1.25 billion in Airtel Africa.

Airtel Africa, which has telecom operations in 14 countries across Africa posted growth of 10.8 percent in its quarterly revenue during the second quarter ending 30 September 2018 — led by growth in data and Airtel money transactions.

Airtel Africa’s mobile data traffic grew 53 percent to 89 billion MBs. Mobile data customer base increased 32.1 percent to 27.1 million.

Airtel Africa’s Airtel Money customer base increased to 12.9 million. The transaction value on Airtel Money platform increased 31 percent to $ 6.3 billion. The company also witnessed an improvement of EBITDA margin by 3.9 percent to 37.1 percent.

Airtel Africa has 15,200 plus mobile broadband towers with 26,300 plus mobile broadband base stations. Airtel Africa’s 3G network is available in 10 nations and LTE services reached 10 nations.