Bharti Airtel delays Africa unit’s listing

Bharti Airtel, India’s secondbiggest wireless carrier, is delaying a planned initial public offering (IPO) of its Africa unit due to the turmoil in emergingmarket stocks, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The company, which was originally aiming to list the unit in London by March, has pushed back the share sale by about half a year, according to the people.

It plans to seek an enterprise value of about $8bn for the Africa business, the people said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.

“Airtel Africa IPO preparations are proceeding as per plan and there is no change,” a representative for Bharti said on Monday. A “new board is in place with new [investor] representatives and we remain very confident about the IPO process.”

Shares of Bharti fell 1.3% in Mumbai trading on Monday. The benchmark S&P BSE Sensex index rose 2.2%. Singapore Telecommunications, which owns a stake in Bharti’s parent company, said in August that the listing is slated for the first quarter of 2019.

The equity rout has derailed IPOs globally, with companies from Spanish oil refiner Cepsa to US filmmaker STX Entertainment scrapping or postponing their offerings.

Bharti, backed by billionaire Sunil Mittal, is seeking the listing after spending heavily to acquire spectrum in India and defend its position in the country against disruptive upstart Reliance Jio Infocomm. It has operations in 14 African markets including Kenya, Tanzania, Nigeria and Ghana, according to its latest annual report.

“Sentimentally, it will be negative for Bharti as its investors are looking at the company’s steps to fight it out with rival Jio,” Sushant Kumar, an equity fund manager at Raay Global Investments in Mumbai, said. The delay in the IPO is “bad news” as it would have helped in reducing group debt.