Millicom sells Rwanda business to bolster LatAm operations

Millicom has agreed to sell its Rwanda operations to subsidiaries of Bharti Airtel Limited as part of its ongoing strategy to continue bolstering its Latin America operations.

"The sale of our business in Rwanda is in line with our strategy to focus on providing advanced fixed and mobile data services in Latin America," Millicom CEO Mauricio Ramos said in a statement.

The "transaction is approximately 6x 2017 adjusted EBITDA, payable over two years, consisting of a mix of cash, vendor loan note and earn out," the telco said. The deal is subject to regulatory approvals.

In October, Millicom announced it had completed a transaction with Bharti Airtel Limited, the parent company of Airtel Ghana, to combine operations in Ghana.

Millicom also announced this week it has reduced its ownership stake in technology micro-insurance business BIMA from 20.4% to 12.0% as part of a transaction that sees Allianz X investing $96.6m in the micro-insurance business. As a result of the transaction, Millicom receives US$24mn in cash.

In its Q3 report in October, Ramos highlighted the performance of the company in Paraguay, Bolivia, and Guatemala.

In an interview with BNamericas in February, Ramos said the telco had decided to focus all its efforts on building out 4G LTE and cable fiber networks in Latin America.

Millicom has operations in Bolivia, Paraguay, Colombia, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Costa Rica. In Africa, the company has operations in Chad, Rwanda, Ghana and Senegal.