Belgium-based Proximus to buy 58% stake in Route Mobile

Belgium-based Proximus Group is reportedly buying a nearly 58% stake in Mumbai-based cloud communication platform provider Route Mobile for ₹5,922 crore. As per an exchange filing, the stake, held by promoters, will be sold at ₹1,626.40 per share.

The regulations say that Proximus will also have to make an open offer to buy an additional stake of up to 26%.

Proximus' stake in Route Mobile may go up to 75 per cent. 

"Proximus Group will acquire 57.56 per cent of the shares in Route Mobile through Proximus Opal, for an initial Rs 59,224 million cash consideration for a price per share of Rs 1,626.40," Route Mobile said in the filing.  

"Depending on the outcome of the MTO (mandatory takeover offer), the stake held by Proximus Opal could further increase to around 75 per cent of Route Mobile's shares. Total cash consideration for this part of the operation will be determined by the effective MTO take-up," the filing said. 

As a part of the agreement, some of the founding shareholders of Route Mobile will reinvest in a minority stake in Proximus Opal, a subsidiary of the Proximus Group and the US-based holding company of Telesign - an affiliate of Proximus. The reinvestment will be around 299.6 euro by some of the founding shareholders of Route Mobile for up to 14.5 per cent of the shares of Proximus Opal.

The reinvestment by some of the founding shareholders of Route Mobile implicitly values Telesign at 1.4 billion euros, the filing said.