Brookfield to buy American Tower’s India ops for $2.5 billion

(Reuters) -Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management (TSX:) will buy American Tower (NYSE:)’s Indian operations for $2.5 billion, which will make the asset manager overtake Indus Towers to become the country’s largest operator of telecom towers.

The deal, one of the largest telecom infrastructure deals in the country, will be Brookfield’s third telecom acquisition in India over the last four years and marks American Tower’s exit from the country.

Brookfield operates around 157,000 telecom towers in India via its domestic associate Data Infrastructure Trust, while American Tower operates some 77,000 towers. Indus has roughly 193,000 towers.

The tower companies are all vying to get business from India’s top three telecom companies. But while Bharti Airtel and Reliance Industries’ Jio have been growing their operations, Vodafone (NASDAQ:) Idea is struggling both operationally and financially.

“The acquired sites are expected to diversify DIT’s (Data Infrastructure Trust) revenues and increase touch points with all mobile network operators in India,” Brookfield said in a statement.

Data Infrastructure reported revenues of 111 billion rupees ($1.33 billion) in the fiscal year ended March 2023, compared to Indus Towers’ 283.8 billion rupees.

The transaction is expected to be completed in the second half of 2024. ($1 = 83.2150 Indian rupees)