Providence buys Hathway Cable stake

The investors bought the shares at INR145 apiece in a series of bulk deals from Mauritius-based Asian Cable Systems, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which runs broadcaster Star India.

Around 24.7 million shares were sold, with Providence subscribing to 14.2 million shares for about INR2.1 billion - an 18.5% discount on Hathway's closing share price of INR177.9 on the National Stock Exchange last Friday. Macquarie Bank, a unit of Australia's Macquarie Group, paid approximately INR1.5 billion for the remainder.

Hathway's shares closed at INR179.55 on the Bombay Stock Exchange on Monday, giving the business a market cap of INR25.6 billion.

As of last December, Akshay Raheja, Viren Raheja, Hathway Investments and Spur Cable & Datacom held 49% of Hathway, foreign institutional investors, mutual funds and other entities owned 19.8% and the rest not held by Asian Cable Systems was in the hands of the public.

Hathway provides cable television services across 140 cities and towns and high-speed cable broadband services across 21 cities. It serves 1.4 million two-way broadband enabled homes, representing around 52 % of the total cable broadband market in India.

India's largest cable broadband services provider, Hathway was previously backed by ChrysCapital via its Monet entity. The PE firm held a 13.26% stake in the company, which it divested for about $71.7 million in 2010. It paid INR264 ($56.8 million) in its initial investment in 2007, reports note, earning profits of approximately $14.8 million by the time of its full exit.

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• Topics
• Technology
• South Asia
• PIPEs
• PIPE
• India
• Providence Equity Partners
• Technology
• ChrysCapital Management