By Tejas Adiga

Last week Norway-based Telenor, the world’s seventh largest telecom operator with a subscriber base of about 159 million, announced its foray into the Indian mobile market when it agreed to buy 60% stake in Unitech Wireless. Unitech Wireless is the one of the latest entrants into the telephony market, which has received license to operate in 22 circles across India. Telenor will pay $1.07bn or Rs 6120 crore for a 60 per cent stake in a fledgling Indian mobile operator, Unitech Wireless, giving it a foothold in a market that is growing at a rate of 8 million new subscribers a month.

So is Telenor’s investment a wise decision or one which may cost the Nordic giant dearly ??

Valuation Mess:

At the outset it is important to understand the valuations involved in the deal. Valuations of the target company are primary steps in deciding a possible investment or acquisition of any stake in that company.

Every telecom company in India for a mobile license pays Rs 1,650 crore as license fee. Every aspirant takes an UASL license for providing telephony, cellular, internet and other communication. Under the UASL scheme every successful applicant would get start up spectrum of 4.4 Mhz in all the 22 circles in India. Accordingly Unitech paid Rs 1650 crore as pan India license fee and was given startup spectrum in 13 circles.

Absurd Estimation:

Telenor- Unitech deal for 60% stake puts the enterprise value of the company at Rs 11,620 crore. Unitech has made a killing by getting an enterprise valuation of Rs 11,620 crore — seven times higher than the price that it paid to obtain pan-India spectrum across 22 circles in January and far higher than its own market-cap of Rs 8,100 crore. The sale of 60% equity to Telenor brings Rs 6,120 crore into Unitech’s kitty or more than three times its investment without a network or customer.

The deal offers Unitech a lifeline, given the over 51% value erosion of its stock recently along with a liquidity crunch in the realty sector that is battling the effects of an economic slowdown. Further Unitech has stood as guarantee for the loan syndicate taken by Unitech Wireless. This deal would infuse cash into the entity and reduce the debt of the parent real estate major.

Imposing Challenges:

Indian telecom sector has developed at a rapid pace and is already reaching saturation. Telenor may find it hard to turn profitable it a short period of time in the highly competitive telecom sector. Major challenges facing it are:

Industry Infrastructure:

Telecom industry is a Greenfield industry and the cost of setting up infrastructure runs into billion dollars. Telenor has placed itself a difficult position by committing $3 to $4 billion over the next three years to build mobile infrastructure on a pan-India basis despite market and regulatory challenges. Building pan-India mobile infrastructure is constrained by the fact that Unitech has spectrum in only 13 of its 22 circles. Uncertainty over the timing and availability of spectrum in the remaining nine circles, an insecurity that the Department of Telecommunications is not in a hurry to address are other major concerns. Active and passive infrastructure sharing is allowed in India, it would take time for a new entrant to negotiate with incumbent players and issues of network and service quality will be affected in a drastic manner.

Incumbent Players and Competition:

Telenor has invested in a company that has no infrastructure, customers, and cash flow. It has paid nearly 7 times the actual cost incurred by Unitech for an entity that has only spectrum as an asset. This is a clear case where Unitech has made a profit due to speculative pricing of spectrum.
Further Telenor is up against some of the world’s largest operators and India’s biggest business like Bharti, Vodafone, Reliance, BSNL, Tata Tele and Idea. India’s top seven mobile companies boast of subscribers in the range of 13 to 77 million. These operators are large, flush with funds, and carry huge infrastructure advantages, apart from nationwide brands. They will not be easy to beat. By the time Telenor would start operations the Indian mobile market would have crossed the 400 million subscribers mark and begin to plateau, if not decline. The only relief for it would be the introduction of Number Portability, but its highly likely that subscribers would go for existing players and not new ones. Thus subscriber acquisitions will be a challenge for Telenor.

Declining Revenue:

Telenor will face an additional challenge of declining ARPU’s or average revenue per user. Indian telecom majors would have nearly exhausted the urban markets by middle of 2009 with a new growth story emerging from rural India, which is untested. With time ARPUs would head southwards which would make business unprofitable.

Security Concerns:

Telenor has operations in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia and Thailand. Telecom being a very sensitive sector Telenor may be under the closer scrutiny of intelligence and security agencies. It may need a lot more clearances because of the nature of the environment it operates in.

For the aforesaid factors Telenor entry into the Indian mobile market, at astronomically high levels is a move that can prove fatal to the well being of Telenor.

(Tejas Adiga is a student of law at Pune)