Bharti Airtel‘s planned African tower sales drag on, with yet another deal that “lapsed and therefore stands terminated.” While the Indian-owned company did close five deals in July, including a sale of Nigeria to American Tower, infrastructure sales are proving more complicated than expected.
Airtel Africa’s agreed sale of towers to independent towerco Eaton Towers has collapsed.
“The agreements for sale of tower assets in Africa between Bharti Airtel Malawi Holdings … and Eaton Towers … has lapsed and therefore stands terminated,” parent company Bharti Airtel (NSE:BHARTIARTL) stated in a regulatory filing this morning.
In June, India’s Bharti announced that a US$400m sale of 3,100 towers in Tanzania and Chad had also “lapsed and therefore stands terminated”.
The following month, however, it completed disposals in five markets, explaining that while two deals had lapsed, sale talks continued in another six markets.
Bharti is looking to cut debt levels both at home and in Africa, where it acquired 17 markets from Zain in 2010. It had hoped to sell all of its 15,000 towers in one go, but has had to take a slower, country-by-country approach to meet regulatory demands. The parent company has deployed a similar tower strategy in India.
Bharti has separately announced that it is now the world’s third largest operator, with 303 million customers across 20 countries.