Reliance Communication is racing against time to conclude the deal with Reliance Jio to sell its wireless business, towers, fibre and media nodes, for about Rs18,000 crore. Jio is expected to take on over Rs7,000 crore of RCom's deferred spectrum liability debt. After the Jio deal, RCom will sell its remaining 66 units of spectrum (valued at around Rs3,700 crore), and is likely to make another Rs10,000 crore by selling real estate. Effectively RCom will reduce its current Rs46,000 crore debt to Rs7,300 crore of debt on paper; The estimated net worth of RCom's remaining business is close to Rs7,000 crore.
Last year RCom's debt-structuring deal with lenders involved banks converting Rs7,000 crore worth of debt into 51 per cent equity in RCom. Though this would have left RCom's books with lower debt, - Rs4,000 crore - lenders are definitely better off with this approach. At least they don't have to pay Rs7,000 crore for 51 per cent of a business that is valued at only Rs7,000 crore.
Manu Kaushik