Telkom South Africa announced recently that the Multi-links will now be offloaded to Helios Towers Nigeria for just $10 million as against the $52 million earlier agreed with Visafone.
Earlier this year, Telkom S.A said that it was selling the Nigerian CDMA network, Multi-Links to another Nigerian network, Visafone. However, shortly after that, it emerged that the company is embroiled in a legal dispute with the tower networks operator, Helios.
Helios had claimed that it had secured an order blocking the sale pending the outcome of the US$250 million legal action against Multi-links over claims of broken contracts.
Telkom added that it will continue operational funding to Multi-Links to enable completion of the transaction – which reverses the recent decision to cut off funding to the subsidiary.
Telkom also has a provision to a share of the profits if and when Helios Towers sells Multi-Links within the next three years, which seems likely as consolidation within Nigeria’s CDMA networks is vital to the industry as it competes with the dominant GSM networks.
Lazarus Zim, Chairman of Telkom, stated: “We believe that this is a win-win transaction that will yield benefits to both sets of shareholders. In addition, we believe that embarking on this path will be beneficial to all of Multi-Links’s stakeholders particularly, employees and customers in Nigeria.”
Inder Bajaj, Chief Executive Officer of HTN, added: “We are very pleased to reach an agreement with Telkom. Upon acquisition, Helios Investment Partners will take forward the future course of Multi-Links to ensure the smooth and orderly transition, re-introduce operational stability and maximize value for all stakeholders including Telkom.”