Tata Teleservices Said to Prepare $670 Million Share Sale
March 29, 2011, 7:05 AM EDTBy Yoshinori Eki and Ketaki Gokhale
(Updates with closing share price in fifth paragraph.)
March 29 (Bloomberg) -- Tata Teleservices Ltd., the Indian phone partner of Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc., is preparing to sell about 30 billion rupees ($670 million) in stock to fund network expansion, two people familiar with the matter said.
The share sale will probably be disclosed by March 31, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. NTT DoCoMo, based in Tokyo, plans to buy enough shares to maintain its 26 percent stake in the closely held Indian company, they said.
The proceeds will help Tata Teleservices build its third- generation wireless network in the world’s second-largest market for mobile services. The company was among nine Indian operators including Vodafone Group Plc’s Indian unit that spent 677.2 billion rupees on next-generation wireless permits in a government auction last year.
Rajeev Narayan, a spokesman for Tata Teleservices in New Delhi, declined to comment. Takuya Ori, an NTT DoCoMo spokesman, declined to comment.
Tata Teleservices Maharashtra Ltd., the listed unit that provides mobile-phone services in Mumbai and the western states of Maharashtra and Goa, rose 0.3 percent to 15.3 rupees at the 3:30 p.m. local time close. The shares climbed as much as 2.6 percent earlier.
Telecommunications Licenses
Tata Teleservices won third-generation licenses in nine of India’s 22 telecommunications zones, paying 59 billion rupees.
NTT DoCoMo rose 1.2 percent to close at 147,900 yen in Tokyo trading. The stock has gained 6 percent over the past year.
Tata Teleservices plans to split the offering into two equal tranches of 15 billion rupees each, one of the people said.
NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s largest mobile-phone operator, completed a 250 billion yen ($2.6 billion) investment in Tata Teleservices in March 2009.
Temasek Holdings Pte, Singapore’s state-owned investment company, bought 9.9 percent of the Tata Group unit in March 2006. Tata units generated combined revenue about $70 billion last year, according to its website.
--Editors: Young-Sam Cho, Abhay Singh
To contact the reporters on this story: Yoshinori Eki in Tokyo at yeki@bloomberg.net; Ketaki Gokhale in Mumbai at kgokhale@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Young-Sam Cho at ycho2@bloomberg.net
