Indian based Telecoms giant, Bharti Airtel, listed the shares of its African entity, Airtel Africa on the London Stock Exchange today.
The company had set a price range of 80 to 100 pence per share, expecting to raise about $750 million. But it eventually opened at 75 pence apiece on its first day of trading, 6.25 percent lower than its issue price of 80 pence per share ($1.01 per share), according to data on Bloomberg.
According to Airtel Africa Chief Executive Officer Raghunath Mandava in a company statement, the IPO was a “proud moment.”
“We are now the first telecom company to simultaneously list on the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange and Nigerian Stock Exchange through an IPO. We welcome our new investors and look forward to continuing to execute our strategy and deliver the growth opportunities across our markets in voice, data and mobile money,
“We are delighted by the strong response we have received from the many high-quality investors from around the world,” he added.
The offer was oversubscribed with “strong interest” from global investors across the UK, US, Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia, the company said, adding that dominant allocation was to global long-only, strategic and pre-IPO investors.
However, according to a Bloomberg report, the stock plunged in London trading, making it among the worst debuts on the European exchanges this year. Airtel Africa dropped as much as 16 per cent to 67 pence a share, matching the first-day decline for OssDsign AB last month.
Last year Airtel Africa raised $1.25 billion from investors, including Temasek Holdings and SoftBank Group. The company has said it’s also planning to pursue a local secondary listing in Nigeria.
Airtel Africa has operations in 14 countries in the continent and has 100 million customers across three regions—Nigeria; East Africa, comprising Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi and Zambia; and the rest of Africa, which comprises Niger, Gabon, Chad, Congo Brazzaville, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar and Seychelles. Nigeria alone accounts for 36% of its total revenue.
