Partners in MegaFon’s major shareholder Garsdale are reportedly planning to sell their stake in the telecoms holding company for up to US$1.9bn.
Sergei Adonyev and Albert Avdolyan intend to offload their 13.5% stake in Garsdale, owned via Telconet…
Partners in MegaFon’s major shareholder Garsdale are reportedly planning to sell their stake in the telecoms holding company for up to US$1.9bn.
Sergei Adonyev and Albert Avdolyan intend to offload their 13.5% stake in Garsdale, owned via Telconet Capital, Russian newspaper Vedomosti reported.
Garsdale has a 50% plus one share interest in local telco MegaFon. Oligarch Alisher Usmanov owns 82% of the holding company, while state-backed Russian Technologies owns the remaining shares.
MegaFon recently received clearance from the Federal Antimonopoly Service to acquire local telco Scartel, in which Usmanov also has a controlling stake, and the paper stated the two deals may take place at the same time.
Scartel is said to be valued at US$1bn, excluding US$500m in debt.
MegaFon’s board of directors are reportedly set to discuss the potential Scartel deal at a meeting tomorrow (7 August).
Following the FAS clearance last week, MegaFon issued a statement saying it was considering a potential transaction but there was no certainty that it would go ahead. The company – Russia’s second largest mobile operator – said its application to FAS marked the “initial part of a transaction which is still under negotiation”.
Anna Kurbatova, a senior TMT analyst with BCS Investment Bank in Moscow, said in an email that the most likely scenario would see the shareholders in Garsdale buy the 13.5% stake.
Garsdale could finance such a transaction with cash proceeds from the sale of Scartel to MegaFon, she said.
Kurbatova said the US$1.8bn-US$1.9bn valuation appears to be based upon MegaFon’s current market value of US$19.3bn and Scartel’s US$1bn, excluding the US$500m debt.
“As for the implication for MegaFon, I think the deal should have no impact on the company unless MegaFon becomes a buyer of Telconet. This is theoretically possible but it seems pretty unlikely taking into account that MegaFon is going to acquire Scartel for US$1bn.”
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