American Tower will be exiting India after completing its strategic review of its Indian operation. American Tower's 77,172 sites in India will be sold to Brookfield's DIT. DIT itself houses Brookfield’s other telecom tower and related infrastructure investments in India: Summit Digitel, Crest Digitel and the newly launched Roam Digitel. Summit Digitel owns 177,000 towers according to the latest data from TowerXchange.
If combined with Summit Digitel the towerco would be come the second largest is in the world, behind China Tower and leapfrogging Indian rival Indus Towers, which remains the third largest towerco globally. It would own roughly a third of India's towers.
“We look forward to expanding and enhancing our existing telecom tower portfolio in India, which enables a broader array of solutions for our customers and partners," said Arpit Agrawal, Brookfield’s managing director, head of infrastructure, India & Middle East.
American Tower meanwhile will drop from second to fourth in terms of tower count, but would remain the largest independent multi-country towerco in the world. American Tower Asia Pacific will still operate in Bangladesh and The Philippines.
The anchor tenant on the majority of American Tower’s sites is Vodafone Idea, and operator which emerged from the merger of Vodafone India and Idea Cellular after American Tower's other anchor tenants Tata And Reliance having already left the market following Jio's explosion on to the scene in 2016. VI had significant financial trouble in recent years, resulting in the government converting licence fees into equity.
At one point, it was mooted that American Tower itself could convert unpaid rent for space on its towers into equity in Vodafone Idea, something the towerco was strongly against.
By acquiring American Tower Brookfield may be creating further opportunities for lease-up for its two businesses. Summit Digitel is still seen by some as too close to Jio and the American Tower acquisition may make it easier to find new tenants for sites.
Citi is serving as lead financial advisor and CDX Advisors is serving as financial advisor to American Tower. Talwar Thakore & Associates (TT&A) is serving as principal legal advisor to American Tower. American tower will use the proceeds of the transaction to repay other debt. The transaction is expected to close in the second half of 2024.
