Grameenphone Confirms IPO Due in October

­Bangladesh's Grameenphone has announced that its shares will be listed on the Dhaka and Chittagong stock exchanges in the first week of October. The company has been seeking a stock market listing for over a year, and now aims to raise around US$68 million from the floatation.

The company is 62 percent owned by Norway's Telenor with the remainder held by Grameen Telecom. Following the floatation, Telenor will hold 55.8% of the company, while Grameen Telecom will own 34.2%.

A dispute between the two shareholders over claims that Telenor should cede management control has been simmering for the past couple of years. In addition, the company warned that it has possible liabilities on unpaid taxes that are subject to legal disputes.

In the prospectus document, the company noted that in 2008, it moved from a single vendor framework to a dual vendor framework as we entered into a long-term purchase and maintenance agreement for network and radio access equipment with Huawei, and plans to renew the framework agreement for the purchase and maintenance of GSM equipment with Ericsson.

The company also confirmed that when the regulator eventually decides to award a 3G license, then it will be bidding. Its existing GSM license expires in 2011 and will need renewing on an annual basis.

The country currently has six operators - and according to figures from the Mobile World, ended Q1 '09 with just under 46.3 million mobile subscribers - which is still a population penetration level of 29.7%. Also worth noting is that while the country has six operators, only four of them are of any significant scale, Grameenphone (21m), Banglalink (10.8m) and Aktel (9.3m) and finally, Warid Telecom (2.3m). The two remaining long term incumbents, Citycell and Teletalk add up to 2.8 million customers between them.

On the web: Mobile World - Grameenphone

Posted to the site on 26th August 2009