Belgium’s Proximus Group to buy 57.66% stake in Route Mobile for Rs 5,922 crore

Belgian telecom service provider Proximus Group will buy a 57.56 per cent stake in Route Mobile, for Rs 5,922.40 crore, the company said on Monday. Proximus announced that it will pay Rs 1,626.40 per share for the cloud communications platform provider. Route Mobile closed at Rs 1,625.35 on Friday.

Following the announcement, Route Mobile’s shares were down 1.7 per cent, reversing course after the stock jumped 8.3 per cent to Rs 1,759.90 after the announcement, which was its highest since February 2022.

The company said that the acquisition of the majority stake will trigger a mandatory takeover offer (MTO), in accordance with Indian regulations, for up to 26 per cent of the total shares outstanding of Route Mobile at the same price per share.

Depending on the outcome of the MTO, the stake held by Proximus could further increase to around 75 per cent. The cash consideration for the same will be determined by the effective MTO take-up, it added.

The acquisition and MTO will be followed by a reinvestment of €299.6 million by some of the founding shareholders of Route Mobile for up to 14.5 per cent of the shares of Proximus. “The reinvestment by some of the founding shareholders of Route Mobile implicitly values Telesign at €1.4 billion. Taking into account the reinvestment, the net cash consideration for Proximus prior to MTO amounts to €∼343.4 million,” it said.

The agreement is conditional upon the realisation of the conditions provided, including receipt of regulatory and antitrust approvals and completion of mandatory takeover offer on certain shares of Route Mobile. The deal is estimated to be closed within the next six to nine months.

Proximus will finance the deal through bridge financing followed by the issuance of a new bond upon closing of the transaction, it added.

Guillaume Boutin, CEO of the Proximus Group, said the deal is a transformational step for their international CPaaS and digital identity activities. “With Route Mobile and Telesign, Proximus Group now holds two strong and highly complementary global assets, both from geography and product expertise standpoints. This will allow us to reap the benefits of scale, considerably reinforce the product suite of both brands and realize synergies generating substantial value for our shareholders.”

“The partnership with Telesign paves the way for Route Mobile to become one of the global CPaaS leaders and achieve a billion-dollar annual revenue run-rate much sooner than the anticipated 3-4 years' timeframe. Route Mobile, with its strong CPaaS omnichannel product offerings and deep entrenchment in emerging markets coupled with Telesign's strong presence in developed markets and a very robust digital identity stack, complement each other immensely to create a very strong value proposition for the Proximus Group and its stakeholders,” said Rajdip Gupta, CEO of Route Mobile.

Proximus expects a combined annual revenue from Route Mobile and Telesign of around €900 million.

Once the deal is closed, Rajdip Gupta will helm the CPaaS activities of the group.

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