Refile: UPDATE 2-Belgium's Proximus to buy 58% stake in India's Route Mobile for $721 mln (July 17)

Route Mobile

19/07/2023 18:41

(Clarifies details on Route Mobile CEO's additional role in
paragraph 6 of July 17 story)
       BENGALURU, July 17 (Reuters) - Belgium's Proximus Opal,
which provides cloud-based telecom platforms for enterprises,
said on Monday it would buy a near-58% stake in Route Mobile
 ROUT.NS  for about 59.22 billion rupees ($721 million), at par
with its Indian peer's current market value.
    Proximus Opal, a unit of Belgian telecom service provider
Proximus Group, has clients such as Salesforce and Bytedance,
while Route Mobile's clients include Amazon and Indian telecom
service provider Airtel.
    Proximus Opal will pay 1,626.40 rupees per Route Mobile
share, just 0.06% more than the closing price on Friday, for the
57.56% stake held by Route Mobile's promoters, an Indian market
term for large shareholders who can influence company policy.
    However, Clear Bridge Ventures, an affiliate of some Route
Mobile promoters, will buy a minority stake of up to 14.5% in
Proximus Opal for about 299.6 million euros (nearly $337
million).
    Proximus Opal will also have to make an offer to buy an
additional stake of up to 26% in Route Mobile at the same price
from retail shareholders, according to Indian regulations.
    "The partnership ... paves the way for Route Mobile to
achieve a billion-dollar annual revenue run-rate much sooner
than the anticipated 3-4 year time frame," said Route Mobile CEO
Rajdip Gupta, who will also lead the group's cloud-based
platform, CPaaS.
    Route Mobile's revenue surged 78% to 35.69 billion rupees 
($434.5 million) in the year ended March 31, while its profit
nearly doubled to 3.27 billion rupees.
    The company's shares were down nearly 4% at 1,562.60 rupees
in afternoon trading in India, having reversed course after
initially jumping 8.3% to a 17-month high. The stock has surged
about 150% since its market debut in September 2020.
    Morgan Stanley was Proximus's financial adviser.
 
 ($1 = 82.1570 Indian rupees)
 ($1 = 0.8910 euros)

 (Reporting by Rama Venkat and Sethuraman NR in Bengaluru;
Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil and Janane Venkatraman)
 ((ramavenkat.raman@thomsonreuters.com; https://twitter.com/ramavenkat0607;
 +91 8095218099;))