Jio says it plans to monetise tower, fibre assets, bring in new investors

MUMBAI: Reliance Industries Thursday said it plans to monetise its tower and fibre assets to reduce debt and strengthen its balance sheet.
“We're in the process of demerging our tower and fibre business and the end objective will be to have different set of investors who would want to run these companies. This means that these assets go off our balance sheets, so the liabilities also go down. Tower and asset monetization is a large part of overall asset monetization plan for the company,” said V Srikanth , joint CFO of Jio's parent Reliance Industries.

The executive added that Jio's capex intensity will go down because the group is almost completing its broadband infrastructure roll outs.

“Capex intensity will go down. So obviously, that is a given. As capex comes down, your earnings momentum slows. 20% growth in retail quarterly and 13-14% growth in Jio, plus hydrocarbon business growth. Plus some of the asset monetization opportunities mean that we are going to see very, very strong balance sheet,” added the CFO.

The carrier said that earlier in the month, it had filed a scheme of arrangement in the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) bench in Ahmedabad to demerge its optic fibre cable assets on a going concern basis to Jio Digital Fibre Pvt. Ltd., and transfer on a slump sale basis of its tower assets on a going concern basis to Reliance Jio Infratel Pvt. Ltd.