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The assets of the beleaguered telecom company Aircel are up for sale and Bharti Airtel, Sterlite Technologies, among others and two investment firms are reportedly keen to separately buy them. Despite the number of interested buyers, the lenders to Aircel may still have to take a large haircut, according to Livemint.
Banks, however, believe the best option for the company would be to sell the assets in a lump sum to one entity as opposed to a group of companies, sources told mint.
"The bids have been received. But we are thinking that the possibility of a lump sum sale will get a better value for the assets. In a couple of days, these talks should happen. We are hoping to get over Rs 25,000 crore from asset sale proceeds," one source added.
The total debt of Aircel—Aircel Cellular and Dishnet Wireless—is valued at Rs 50,000 crore, of which over Rs 15,000 crore is owed to financial creditors and Rs 35,000 crore are owed to operational creditors.
All the assets, including spectrum licences and fibre, will be valued at Rs 32,362 crore, according to Aircel. The company’s lenders, such as State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank, hope to raise over Rs 25,000 crore though even that is much less than the actual value.
Airtel is currently the only bidder and it had also announced buying spectrum worth Rs 3,500 crore from Aircel in 2016 in eight of its telecom circles. Aircel had also sold 17,500 towers and 21,000 tenancies to Chennai Network Infrastructure, a unit of GTL Infrastructure, for Rs 8,000 crore.
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