KARACHI: TeleCard said on Monday its board of directors had approved a 200 per cent Rights Offer to be issued at par value, ie Rs10 per share.
In a meeting held on Saturday, the Board considered and approved the capital raising plan of the company in order to meet the growth requirements under the new deregulated regime in the telecom sector.
In total, 200 million new shares will be issued by the company at Rs10 each in the ratio of two new shares for every share held to raise new equity funds of Rs2 billion. This will increase the total paid-up capital of the company to Rs3 billion.
The Board also approved a Rs2 billion publicly listed TFC issue with a green shoe option of Rs400 million.
This capital raising is part of TeleCard’s plan to become the leading alternate telecom service provider in Pakistan.
With the deregulation of the telecom sector, private sector has been allowed to provide competing services to the state-owned PTCL. TeleCard has obtained licences for Long Distance and International Services (LDI) and for Local Loop Services, as well as Frequency Spectrum in all 14 telecom regions of the country enabling it to provide Wireless Local Loop (WLL) services all across the country.
Of the Rs4.4 billion that will be raised by the company, approximately Rs3.3 billion will be paid as the WLL spectrum fee while the balance amount will be invested in the WLL and LDI networks.
Currently, TeleCard is the only company in Pakistan which has an existing nationwide WLL network installed, and additional investments will be made over the next few years to enhance the capacity of the network to more than 2 million customers.
The company has equipment supply contracts with industry leaders such as Alcatel, Lucent Technologies and ZTE Corporation.
With Wireless Local Loop licences and a Long Distance and International Services licence, TeleCard is set to provide the people of Pakistan integrated telecom services based upon state-of-the-art technology. The Company will now be able to offer complete telecommunication services all over the country including voice, high-speed Internet, voice mail, SMS and long distance calling services.
TeleCard is the leading private sector telecom service provider in Pakistan with coverage reaching 85 million people in urban, sub-urban and rural areas of all four provinces of the country.
