Airtel Africa, a leading provider of telecommunications and mobile money services, with a presence in 14 countries across Africa, has signed a new $500m loan facility with a group of relationship banks.
The new committed facility consists of a combination of a revolving credit facility and term loans with tenor of up to 4 years.
The facility will be used to partially refinance the Group’s €750m Euro denominated bond (c.$880m) due 20 May 2021.
The balance of the Euro denominated bond will be repaid with existing Group cash to reduce gross debt and associated interest costs.
The new loan facility further strengthens the core liquidity of the Group.
It also has prepayment flexibilities that will allow the Group to optimise the efficiency of its capital structure with the free cash flows and cash receipts anticipated over the next 12 months following the recent announcements related to tower sales and mobile money minority investments.
The banks which participated in the facility include a diverse group of existing global relationship banks, Bank of America, BNP Paribas, Citibank, HSBC, J.P. Morgan, Standard Chartered Bank and two Indian relationship banks, Axis Bank and Kotak Mahindra Bank.