Reliance Jio IPO: Reliance Jio likely to go public this year, says CLSA

Kolkata: Calendar 2022 is likely to see the much-awaited listing of Reliance Industries’ (RIL’s) telecom unit, Jio, an event that could be a potential telecom sector catalyst, CLSA said.

“2022 will see big events led by the 5G spectrum auction and a likely mega initial public offer (IPO)/separate listing of Reliance Jio from RIL, following the 33 per cent pre-IPO stake sales to 13 investors including, 10 per cent to Facebook and 8 per cent to Google in 2020,” the global brokerage said in a research note.

CLSA values Jio’s mobile business at $99 billion EV (enterprise value) at 11.5x EV/Ebitda and includes $5 billion EV for JioFiber — the home broadband business.

It added that “a likely Jio IPO would be a sector valuation catalyst,” with the market leader’s pre-IPO $20 billion deals valuation itself at 10x EV/Ebitda”.

Strong enthusiasm around a potential big-bang Jio IPO comes at a time when the days of fierce price wars in India’s debt-laden telecom sector are drawing to a close in the recent aftermath of broad-based prepaid tariff hikes taken by the Big 3 telcos to boost revenues on the back of the recently announced telecom reforms package by the government.

Jio Platforms, Reliance Jio’s parent, has already raised over a whopping Rs 1.52 lakh-crore from a clutch of marquee global investors, including Facebook, Google, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and top private equity players such as Silver Lake, Vista Equity Partners, General Atlantic and…

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