Excelcomindo to issue bond for expansion, 3G
The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
The country's third-largest cellular firm PT Excelcomindo Pratama will issue U.S. dollar-denominated bonds worth US$250 million, as part of its planned $400 million of new debts before mid next year, in a bid to widen its services.
"We will issue $250 million worth of bonds before mid 2006, while the rest (of the finance) will come from syndicated loans or other credit facilities," Excelcomindo president director Rudiantara said on Friday after the company's extraordinary meeting of shareholders.
Financial director Jaffa Sani explained that the bonds would mature in seven years after the issuance date with a coupon rate of 8 percent.
At present, the company's debt stands at $420 million, of which $350 million is in the form of bonds and the remaining $70 million floating rate notes.
Jaffa said the floating rate notes would be shifted to bonds, bringing the total amount in bonds to $670 million.
JP Morgan, Malaysian CIMB and UBS will act as the company's advisors.
With some 5.9 million cellular phone subscribers, Excelcomindo is aiming at expanding its fiber optic network to provide more coverage. The new network will span from Batam island to Malaysia or Singapore.
The company, partly owned by Malaysian Khazanah Nasional Bhd., plans to set up some 2,000 more base transceiver stations next year and to focus its network expansion in Sumatra.
Jaffa said his company would allocate $40 million for the planned re-tender of the third generation (3G) frequency. "But, the cost is very likely to be more than that."
There is still 60 Mega Hertz (MHz) of the 1,900 frequency spectrum to be reallocated for the use of triple play communication services: Audio, video and data transmissions.
The re-tender has been delayed from last month's schedule due to several technical aspects that had to be dealt with. Among them is th clearing of the frequency spectrum of current users.
"We are trying to be more prudent in the re-tender to avoid misallocation like we had in the past," Ministry of Communications and Information's director general for post and telecommunications Basuki Yusuf Iskandar said.
Excelcomindo launched a trial of its 3G services in October. It was the second cellular operator to launch such services after Indonesia's largest cellular-phone company PT Telkomsel.
Telkomsel and Excelcomindo have each received a 5 MHz frequency bandwidth slot to run their 3G-services trials.
Current license holders for the spectrum are PT Cyber Access Communications (CAC) with 15 MHz and PT Natrindo Telepon Seluler (NTS) with 10 MHz. However, both companies have yet to operate the services since the government granted the licenses in 2003.