The London-listed firm said it had sold its 79.2 million shares in the company on Friday, with about £85m-worth going towards repaying debts relating to its Indian assets
Vodafone has offloaded its shares in Indus Towers, the Indian telecoms group, for £269m.
The London-based company announced it had sold its 79.2 million shares in the firm on Friday, with approximately £85m being used to repay debts linked to its Indian assets. The remainder, Vodafone revealed, has been utilised to increase its stake in Vodafone Idea, another Indian telecoms company, from 22.6% to 24.4%.
Mumbai-based Vodafone Idea is India’s third largest mobile telecoms network, born out of a 2018 merger between Vodafone India and Idea Cellular. Vodafone has been progressively reducing its stake in Indus Towers in recent months. In June, it sold 484.7 million shares to clear £1.5bn-worth of debt against its Indian assets.
The latest sale represents about 3% of Indus Towers’ total stock. This comes as Vodafone has been striving to free up cash and enhance its financial performance by selling off parts of the business, including its Spanish division, after previously agreeing deals to sell its Hungarian and Ghanaian divisions.
Earlier in January, it finalised the eight billion euro (£6.6bn) sale of its Italian business to Switzerland’s Swisscom. The mobile phone giant said it planned to use the cash to reduce its debt pile and complete a two billion euro (£1.7bn) share buyback to boost returns for investors.
