Reliance Industries Ltd, India’s biggest company by market value, may spend about US$5 billion on a wireless Internet venture as chairman Mukesh Ambani reenters an industry he left to his brother in 2005, analysts said.
The company plans to spend more than US$1 billion on leasing infrastructure, such as base stations and optic-fiber lines for its broadband services, Alok Deshpande, an analyst with Elara Capital Ltd, said.
Reliance, which briefed analysts on Saturday, will pay 128.5 billion rupees (US$2.8 billion) for Internet services licenses earmarked for Infotel Broadband Services Ltd, which it bought last week for 48 billion rupees, he said.
“That money is about one year’s free cash flow,” said Jigar Shah, the Mumbai-based head of research at Kim Eng Securities Pvt. “They are making an effort to use the cash they are generating from their current operations in a business they have known in the past.”
The acquisition of Infotel returns Ambani to the communications industry five years after he handed over his interests in the sector to his younger sibling Anil, who controls Reliance Communications Ltd. The brothers, who broke up India’s second-biggest industrial group in 2005, last month said they would compete in each other’s sectors for the first time, ending a spat that delayed infrastructure projects and a merger.
A spokesman for Mumbai-based Reliance Industries, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
Shares in Reliance Industries gained 1.8 percent to 1,064.75 rupees, the highest since May 14, at 9:56am, compared with a 1 percent increase in the benchmark Sensitive Index of the Bombay Stock Exchange. The shares have declined 10 percent in the past year.
“The telecoms business gives clarity on the deployment of their cash and that helps push up shares,” said Deepak Pareek, a Mumbai-based analyst with Angel Broking Ltd.
Reliance is in talks with banks to borrow US$1 billion, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said on June 4.
Following the acquisition of Infotel, Reliance Industries will deploy 15,000 base stations across India, increasing to 20,000, at a cost of US$1.07 billion to US$1.5 billion over the next three years, Shubham Majumder, a Mumbai-based analyst with Macquarie Group Ltd, said in a note to clients yesterday.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last