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The Indian billionaire made the sale following the company’s positive quarterly results
This week, Sunil Mittal has sold a 0.84% stake (51 million shares) in India’s second largest telco, Bharti Airtel, raising roughly $976 million.
The sale was made through the Mittal family’s investment company, Indian Continental Investment.
Roughly a quarter of these shares were sold to group firm Bharti Telecom, with the remaining three quarters sold to ‘key marquee long-only names, both global and domestic’, according to the filing.
A report from Bloomberg names some of the buyers additional buyers as GQG Partners LLC, Fidelity Investments, Lazard Inc, SBI Life Insurance Co., and ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co.
“With this, Bharti Telecom now holds around 40.47 per cent of Airtel, reinforcing its previously stated intent of strengthening its position as the principal vehicle to have a controlling stake in Airtel, remaining focused on gradually increasing its stake while maintaining a prudent leverage profile as it does so,” read the filing.
The move follows Airtel posting solid Q3 financial results earlier this month, including a 460.9% boost in net profit year-on-year. The company attributed this largely to the strengthening of its Indian mobile business, currency expansion in its African markets, and the consolidation of Indus Towers.
For Mittal, the move will help free up funds for the group’s continued investments in global markets. Sources suggest that some of this funding will be use to refinance the loans taken out by Bharti Enterprises when they bought a 24.5% stake in BT Group last year.
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