Bharti Airtel's Rs 21,000 crore rights issue to open on October 5

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The Rs 21,000 crore rights issue of telecom major Bharti Airtel would open on October 5, the company said in a regulatory filing on September 22. The closing date of the issue was stated as October 21, 2021.

The dates were finalised at the Board of Directors' meeting held earlier today. The company also noted that the 'Record Date', for the purpose of determining the shareholders who shall be eligible to receive the rights entitlement in the issue, is September 28.

The issue size has been fixed as "up to 392,287,662 Rights Equity shares", Bharti Airtel said, and reiterated the rights issue price of Rs 535 per fully paid-up equity share, including face value of Rs 5 and premium of Rs 530 per equity share.

The rights entitlement ratio entails one equity share for every 14 equity shares held by eligible shareholders as on the record date.

Notably, the telecom firm's board had first approved the plan to raise up to Rs 21,000 crore capital via rights issue on August 29.

The mega fundraising is bound to give more firepower to Airtel, as the company takes on rivals in the fiercely-competitive Indian telecom market.

Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel is the second largest telco in the three private player market and as per subscriber data released by telecom regulator recently, Airtel added 38.1 lakh wireless subscribers in June, pushing up its mobile user base to 35.2 crore.

Vodafone Idea Ltd (VIL), the third operator in the sector, is struggling to stay afloat and analysts have sounded an alarm over potential risk of the market turning into a duopoly.

VIL lost about 42.8 lakh subscribers during June, and its user base shrunk to 27.3 crore, compounding woes of the debt-laden telco that is in grip of an existential crisis.