Telecom Lead India: American Tower Corporation is close to buying Tower Vision, a telecom tower company, for Rs 3,200 crore.
Tower Vision’s investors include Fort Group and Mivatch Shamir from Israel, UK’s RP Capital, and Quadrangle Partners, a private equity fund.
This will be the first M&A transaction in nearly three years in the telecom towers business.
ATC is offering Rs 40 lakh per tower for 8,000 towers of Tower Vision that have been on the block since 2010. The valuation is marginally lower than the Rs 46 lakh per tower GTL Infrastructure paid for acquiring Aircel’s tower business in January 2010, Times of India reported.
ATC, one of the world’s largest and most profitable tower companies, has grown in the country largely through the acquisition of XCel and Essar Telecom’s towers. It currently has 10,000 operational towers and this number will rise to 18,000 if it is able to buy Tower Vision.
Headed by Amit Sharma, executive vice president and president, Asia, ATC is planning to grow quickly in India.
Its global portfolio includes approximately 45000 tower sites in more than ten countries in America, Asia and India. Since entering the Indian telecom market in 2007, American Tower has built and acquired tower assets throughout the country ― bringing the site portfolio to more than 10,500 towers nationwide.
India has about 3,00,000 privately held telecom towers, with the country’s largest tower company, Indus Tower, a three-way joint venture between Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, and Idea Cellular, owning about 1,10,000 installations.
American Tower is a leading independent owner and operator of wireless and broadcast communication sites. Company’s global portfolio includes approximately 54,000 owned or managed sites and is experiencing steady growth. In addition to leasing space on towers, we provide customized collocation solutions through our Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) that support seamless in-building and outdoor wireless coverage.
Headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts,