Pending regulatory approval, the assets and workers of AT Ghana willing be transferred from Airtel Ghana to a new company called People’s Network Ghana Limited (PPL Net Ghana) to free the eventual investor from taking on the huge liabilities of the company.
Techfocus24 can confirm that the company is currently seeking regulatory approval from the National Communications Authority for the transfer, which will ready AT Ghana for private investment.
PPL Net Ghana is completely owned by Airtel Ghana, which runs AT Ghana; and Airtel Ghana is also 100% owned by the government of Ghana. So there are no private interests in PPL Net Ghana.
Reliable sources with impeccable knowledge about the matter told Techfocus24 that the reason for taking that step was to “simply drop down the business – including employees and assets – into the new company to preserve jobs, and to prepare the company for eventual investment.”
It would recalled that exactly a year ago in November 2023, government announced that it had formed a joint venture with Hannam Investments to recapitalize AT Ghana with $150 million. It has been a whole year and nothing has been heard of that investment.
Sources told Techfocus24 that the liabilities of AT Ghana, which far outweighs its assets was of great concern to the investor and to any other potential investors engaged so far. So, it became imperative for the PPL Net to be created to takeover the assets and staff while government, through Airtel Ghana, continues to take care of the liabilities outside of the purview of the new company.
“The liabilities of Airtel Ghana are substantially more than its value. Nobody will invest directly into a company with negative value. Every potential investor engaged so far requires this drop down into a nice clean company, and they will invest in this new clean company,” one of the sources said.
As of August 2024, AT Ghana’s market share was less than 8%. The company owes hundreds of millions of dollars to independent towercos, content providers, banks and just about any vendor it works with. But the company has not collapsed because government continues to engage the creditors and vendors just to buy more time.
Indeed, on paper the value of AT Ghana is still $1, and one of the sources said in the event of bankruptcy, pretty much nobody gets anything except the government, because the company is in a very deep abyss.
The situation of AT Ghana is so bad that one source said, even when it was suggested that Telecel Ghana should merge with them, Telecel did not even want to here that conversation.
“The way things are now the only way to go is what has been done now, so that the potential investor will feel confident to put their money into the clean company to preserve jobs,” one source said.
Meanwhile, staff of AT Ghana have been informed of the new arrangement, under which their jobs are still secured.
The sources could however not confirm if Hannam Investments are still in the picture as the investors into the company.
Source: techfocus24