Soros-backed Helios Towers raises $364m in London IPO
Helios Towers raised £288-million ($364 million) in a long-delayed share sale that gives investors a foothold in Africa’s fast-growing wireless tower industry.
The stock priced at 115p apiece, the bottom end of the initial range, the company said in a statement. Shareholders including Millicom International Cellular SA and Bharti Airtel are selling down their stakes in the London IPO, with Helios set for a market valuation of £1.15-billion.
The company backed by billionaire financier George Soros has more than 6 800 towers spread across five African countries and needs the money to step up its rollout of fourth-generation mobile services and keep pace with soaring mobile data consumption on the continent.
It was originally looking to raise as much as $500-million.
New share sales in Europe have struggled to drum up enough interest this year. The London market is particularly quiet and Helios is one of several African and Middle Eastern companies that are helping to keep it alive.
While sellers often sought valuations in line with near-peak levels in publicly traded stocks, buyers have taken a more cautious view. Airtel Africa has lost a third of its value since listing in June.
Helios already had to cancel an IPO attempt last year. It was one of three African tower firms that tried to sell stock in London or New York. The most optimistic estimates gave them a potential combined value of $15-billion before choppy markets scuppered the plans and Helios’s two peers went down other routes.
The biggest, IHS Towers, decided to raise $1.3-billion via the debt market in two offerings that will close next week. The other, Eaton Towers, is being bought by American Tower Corp.
Helios serves carriers including Airtel Africa, MTN Group and Vodacom Group. It’s the only independent tower operator in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Tanzania, has operations in Ghana and launched in South Africa this year.
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