Belgium's Proximus Group, a provider of communication-led digital services, is all set to acquire a majority stake in Mumabi-listed messaging and voice application programming interface company Route Mobile Ltd.
Proximus Opal SA will buy a 57.56% stake in Route Mobile from the company’s promoters at Rs 1,626.4 per share, which takes the total consideration at $720.53 million (around Rs 5,922 crore), as per a statement filed by Route Mobile with NSE.
Route Mobile’s promoters include Sandipkumar Gupta, Rajdipkumar Gupta, Sarika R Gupta, Sunita S Gupta, and a few other family members.
A few founding promoters of Route Mobile will buy up to a 14.5% stake in Proximus Opal for €299.60 million ($336.3 million), as part of the transaction.
Route Mobile's share prices were down 1.25% at Rs 1,605.05 apiece Rs on Monday at around 11 am.
Proximus is also looking to acquire another 26% stake in Route Mobile via an open offer, post the transaction with the company’s promoters. It will buy the shares from public shareholders at Rs 1,626.4 per share, which is near its Friday closing price. The transaction is subject to statutory approvals.
Mumbai-based Route Mobile, erstwhile RouteSms Solutions Ltd, was founded in 2004. The company, which counts Goldman Sachs and PineBridge Investments as its investors, also has offices in Pune, Hyderabad, New Delhi, London, Toronto, Lagos and the UAE. It went public in September 2020.
Route Mobile more than doubled its net profit to Rs 104 crore in the quarter ended March 2023 from Rs 47.4 crore in the same quarter of the previous fiscal year. Its consolidated revenue grew 61% to Rs 1008.6 crore in Q4 FY23 from Rs 626.1 crore in the March 2022 quarter.
At the time of the Q4 FY23 results announcement, Rajdipkumar, who is the managing director and the chief executive officer of the company, said that the company has “achieved an annual run rate of half a billion dollars in revenue…despite the slow pace of global economic development due to the ongoing battle against inflation.”
