Aleem Khan

Giv­ing ear­ly ten­der re­sults of its of­fer for 10.5 per cent bonds due 2018, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions provider Dig­i­cel yes­ter­day an­nounced that it has sold more than 70 per cent as of April 1.In a re­lease from its Ja­maica head of­fice, Dig­i­cel said it had "re­ceived and ac­cept­ed for pur­chase US$546,499,000 ag­gre­gate prin­ci­pal amount, or 70.52 per cent, of its out­stand­ing 10.5 per cent Se­nior Notes due 2018 valid­ly ten­dered by 5 pm, New York City time, on April 1, 2014 and ex­pects to pay for ten­dered notes on April 2."In ad­di­tion, the com­pa­ny said it had re­ceived con­sents from hold­ers of 70.52 per cent of the notes as at 5 pm, New York City time, on April 1. The con­sents are suf­fi­cient to ef­fect all of the pro­posed amend­ments to the in­den­ture gov­ern­ing the notes as set forth in Dig­i­cel's Of­fer to Pur­chase and Con­sent So­lic­i­ta­tion State­ment dat­ed March 19.

Dig­i­cel has re­tained Cit­i­group Glob­al Mar­kets Inc as deal­er man­ag­er and so­lic­i­ta­tion agent for the ten­der of­fer and con­sent so­lic­i­ta­tion.A 12-year-old op­er­a­tion start­ed in the Caribbean by Irish­man De­nis O'Brien, the Dig­i­cel group now has more than 13 mil­lion cus­tomers across 32 mar­kets in the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Asia-Pa­cif­ic. The com­pa­ny spon­sors the West In­dies crick­et team and is al­so the ti­tle spon­sor of the Caribbean Pre­mier League.Dig­i­cel al­so runs a host of com­mu­ni­ty-based ini­tia­tives across its mar­kets and has set up Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tions in Ja­maica, Haiti, Papua New Guinea and T&T which fo­cus on ed­u­ca­tion­al, cul­tur­al and so­cial de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes.

Last Wednes­day, cit­ing a pro­mo­tion­al doc­u­ment, the Irish Times re­port­ed that Dig­i­cel had paid a spe­cial div­i­dend of US$650 mil­lion to O'Brien and the few mi­nor­i­ty share­hold­ers who hold less than ten per cent of the com­pa­ny.Dig­i­cel was al­so re­port­ed to have plans to pay US$60 mil­lion in share op­tion pay­ments to se­nior ex­ec­u­tives of the com­pa­ny over the next two years.

"These de­tails are in­clud­ed in a doc­u­ment to pro­mote Dig­i­cel Group Ltd's lat­est fundrais­ing. The com­pa­ny, which acts as the over­ar­ch­ing en­ti­ty for Dig­i­cel's op­er­a­tions in the Caribbean, Cen­tral Amer­i­ca and Asia-Pa­cif­ic, is seek­ing to raise US$1 bil­lion from in­vestors through a se­nior loan note with an eight-year ma­tu­ri­ty to be used to re­pay more ex­pen­sive ex­ist­ing debt," the Irish re­port said.

The div­i­dend last month fol­lows on from O'Brien's takes of US$346.8 mil­lion last year, �115.9 mil­lion in 2012 and US$45.3 mil­lion a year ear­li­er. This amounts to US$1.16 bil­lion in less than four years.The bond doc­u­ment al­so shows Dig­i­cel's rev­enues in the three months to the end of De­cem­ber de­clined to US$698.8 mil­lion from US$710.1 mil­lion for the same pe­ri­od of 2012.