Malaysia’s Axiata Group is considering selling up to a 40% stake in Cambodian wireless unit Smart Axiata, providing the company can ‘find the right partner’, the Phnom Penh Post cites Axiata’s CFO Chari Thandalam Veeravalli Thirumala as saying. Speaking at the Axiata Regional Media Summit, the executive indicated that any proceeds from a sale of shares would be used to ‘pursue opportunities’, including infrastructure expansion and future acquisitions, in or outside of Cambodia, which is home to six active mobile operators. Last month Axiata Group confirmed that it had been ‘exploring options to further optimise its balance sheet and group structure, potentially including, but not limited to, the portfolio rebalancing and review of shareholding across subsidiaries’, but the firm has indicated that it will retain a majority stake and management control across its footprint.
Axiata Group holds a roughly 92.5% stake in Smart Axiata, which is Cambodia’s second largest wireless operator by subscribers, with around 7.5 million customers at mid-2016, according to TeleGeography’s GlobalComms Database.