Bharti Airtel Limited agreed to acquire Millicom’s Rwanda mobile network, which operates under the Tigo Rwanda brand. The companies said the price is approximately 6x 2017 adjusted EBITDA, payable over two years, consisting of a mix of cash, vendor loan note and earn out. Media sources put the price at about US$6 billion.
Tigo Rwanda has about 3.25 million customers. By integrating the assets with its own Airtel Rwanda, Bharti will hold approximately 40% of the market, behind MTN.
Airtel Africa also has operations in 15 other countries, including some acquired properties in Uganda (Warid), Congo B (Warid), Kenya (yu Mobile), and Ghana (Millicom).
Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman of Bharti Airtel stated: “Airtel has taken proactive steps in Africa to consolidate and realign the market structure in the last few remaining countries where its operations are lagging on account of lower market share and presence of too many operators. Airtel and Tigo have already merged their operations to create a strong viable entity in Ghana. Today, it has taken yet another important step to acquire Tigo Rwanda to become a profitable and a strong challenger in a two-player market.”
Mauricio Ramos, CEO of Millicom, commented: “The sale of our business in Rwanda is in line with our strategy to focus on providing advanced fixed and mobile data services in Latin America. We are very grateful to the government of Rwanda for their support throughout the last eight years, which allowed us to extend digital inclusion to thousands of Rwandans.”
