Liquid Telecom raises $180m to expand its offering
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Liquid Telecom raises $180m to expand its offering

Liquid Telecom, the pan African telecoms group, says that it has raised $180 million in secured senior notes and tap stock.

The newly raised funds will be used to refinance the company’s debt, expand its data centres and infrastructure and pay costs, fees and expenses in relation to the new offering.

Commenting on the news Nic Rudnick, CEO of Liquid Telecom Group, said: “This is an exciting time for Liquid Telecom as we deliver our strategy with further investment and the monetisation of our network.”

The success of its offering reflects the increased demand that the Group has seen in its wholesale, enterprise and retail segments in the first-half of 2017.

“Through the year we have seen increased demand from our customers reflected by our revenue and EBITDA growth,” added Rudnick. “With this backdrop in mind, the Board has approved the repayment of the term-loan portion of our debt, replacing it with further bonds and therefore simplifying our capital structure and raising additional funding.

The closing of the $180 million tap offering, of the Issuer’s $550 million 8½% senior secured notes, is due by 2022 at an issue price of 105.0%.

“The funding will enable Liquid Telecom to continue to deliver its strategy to further expand and enhance its pan-African fibre network – the largest of its kind in the region – and broaden its digital service offering such as enterprise cloud services including Office 365 and Azure and new content products including Netflix and 100 other channels across the African continent.”

Liquid Telecom recently announced that it is to become a Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute partner across Africa when Microsoft Azure becomes generally available in 2018. Using its CloudConnect service, Liquid Telecom will be offering direct connections to Microsoft’s South African ExpressRoute locations enabling businesses of all sizes in Africa to have private access to Azure.

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