UltraTech Cement Ltd will buy nearly two-thirds of Jaiprakash Associates Ltd’s cement business under a revised deal valued at Rs 15,900 crore (about $2.4 billion) including debt, the two companies said on Thursday.
The two companies had signed a preliminary deal last month that was worth Rs 16,500 crore. The deal's dollar value remains almost same because of the rupee's rise over the past few weeks; the local unit touched a three-month high against the greenback on Thursday.
The new deal excludes a plant in Karnataka with a capacity of 1.2 million tonnes a year, the companies said. UltraTech will now acquire Jaiprakash cement plants in five states with total capacity of 21.2 million tonnes, instead of 22.4 million tonnes proposed earlier. Jaiprakash, which has been selling assets to cut debt, will retain a cement capacity of 10.6 million tonnes.
The acquisition increases the capacity of UltraTech, the single-largest cement firm in the country, to 91.1 million tonnes. UltraTech will also spend Rs 470 crore to complete an under-construction grinding unit.
The transaction is likely to be completed in about a year’s time.
The deal will help UltraTech to overtake its Swiss construction materials rival LafargeHolcim, which controls Ambuja Cements, ACC and Lafarge India in the country.
This is the companies’ second such agreement. In December 2014, UltraTech had inked a deal to buy two units of Jaiprakash at an enterprise value of Rs 5,400 crore. However, it couldn’t get approval for the mining rights associated with the plants, which were crucial for the deal to go through. As a result, the companies scrapped that deal in February.
