(Reuters) -India’s Bharti Airtel and its unit Bharti Hexacom have prepaid 59.85 billion rupees ($698.33 million) to the government, fully clearing “high-cost” liabilities from the 2024 spectrum auctions, the telecom company said on Wednesday.
Airtel, the country’s no.2 telecom firm by user base, has been prepaying high-cost spectrum dues that it and other Indian telecom operators owe the government, following years of high-stakes auctions and aggressive bidding for airwaves.
The latest payment has trimmed Airtel’s debt pile related to spectrum to 520 billion rupees, bringing down the cost of debt to 7.22%, the company said.
Airtel’s early payments now total 666.65 billion rupees ($7.78 billion), it said, adding that it has settled liabilities with interest rates of 10%, 9.75%, and 9.3% about seven years before their average maturity dates.
The latest payment was made for liabilities that carried an interest rate of 8.65%, Airtel said, without specifying when the debt was previously due.
Peer Vodafone Idea owes about 1.42 trillion rupees in spectrum dues as of September 2024.
Another Airtel subsidiary, Network i2i, also redeemed $1 billion in perpetual debt securities – a debt instrument with no fixed maturity date – reducing the company’s outstanding perpetual notes to $479 million, the telecom company said.
Airtel’s shares closed 0.5% higher on Wednesday after the announcement.
($1 = 85.7050 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Aleef Jahan in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)
