Airtel Completes Allotment Of 7.11 Cr Shares To Google At INR 734 Per Share

Telecom giant Bharti Airtel on Thursday (July 14) approved the allotment of more than 7.11 Cr shares to tech giant Google at an issue price of INR 734.

“…the Company (Airtel) has, at its meeting held today, i.e. July 14, 2022, approved the allotment of 71,176,839 equity shares of the face value of INR 5 each fully paid up, on preferential basis to Google International LLC (Google) at an issue price of Rs. 734/- per equity share (including a premium of Rs. 729 per equity share),” Bharti Airtel said in a stock exchange filing.

The decision was taken at a meeting of the ‘Special Committee of Directors for Preferential Allotment’, following which Google’s stake in Airtel stands at 1.20% of the total post equity shares or 1.17% of the telecom company on a fully-diluted basis.

“Paid-up equity share capital of the Company stands increased to INR 28,306,517,827.50 divided into 5,563,231,650 fully paid-up equity shares of INR 5 each and 392,287,662 partly- paid-up equity shares of INR 5 each (paid-up value INR 1.25 each)”, noted Bharti Airtel. 

The transaction was executed more than a fortnight after the Competition Commission of India (CCI) gave its nod to the proposed acquisition of stake in telecom major Bharti Airtel by Google.

The deal was announced in January when Google said that it would pick up a 1.28% stake in the telco for $700 Mn. The tech giant also said that it would make an additional investment of $300 Mn towards potential multi-year commercial agreements with Airtel.

The capital was earmarked from the larger Google For India Digitisation Fund, which was announced in July 2020 by its chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai.

With the deal now complete, the two companies will likely work together on scaling up the telco’s cloud solutions and building a range of affordable Android devices in collaboration with other manufacturers.

This is the second high profile investment of Google in an Indian telecom company. Previously, it also acquired a 7.73% stake in Reliance Jio for $4.5 Bn.

As per latest data available with Inc42, Airtel was the second biggest telecom company in the country with a market share of 31.61% in April, behind Jio, which had a market share of 35.5%.

Shares of Bharti Airtel on Thursday closed 0.23% lower at INR 642 on the BSE.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.