Engro Corp to boost telecom business with Rs21.5bln injection

KARACHI: Engro Corporation on Wednesday said it was raising its total equity investment in vertical telecom infrastructure to Rs21.5 billion, with a focus on its built-to-suit (BTS) cellular tower business.

Engro has also formed a dedicated platform for connectivity and telecom infrastructure related initiatives by the name of Engro Connect (Pvt) Limited (EConnect), according to an official communication.

EConnect is a wholly owned subsidiary of Engro and will hold complete ownership of Engro Enfrashare (Pvt) Limited (Enfrashare), which is now Pakistan’s largest independent telecom tower company in terms of operationalised and active towers. The company said the total equity injection of Rs21.5 billion in EConnect would be mainly utilised to expand the BTS tower business under Enfrashare including but not limited to provision of efficient energy solutions, modernisation of operations, installation of state-of-the-art network monitoring solutions, and exploration of other investment avenues within the connectivity value chain.

“We believe robust connectivity initiatives and best-in-class telecom infrastructure are the need of the hour for the country as the world is now moving swiftly towards digitalization and infrastructure sharing,” said Ghias Khan, President and CEO Engro Corporation in a statement.

“While being focused on Engro’s purpose of solving some of Pakistan’s most pressing issues, we would utilise our considerable balance sheet and quality human capital to support our mobile network operators in their passive infrastructure requirements while creating an ecosystem for the deployment of next generation networks.” He said a promising growth story was in sight for the telecom sector in Pakistan with the 3G/4G subscriber base expanding beyond 100 million and registering an annual growth of 28 percent, coupled with exponential data growth that more than doubled from FY2018 to FY2020. “With such strong development on the horizon, Enfrashare and its tower infrastructure will be a critical enabler for the mobile network operators to expand their networks while ensuring quality of services,” he added.

Currently, Enfrashare has over 1,800 operational sites with a current tenant base of 1,963 tenants and has framework agreements in place with all 4 mobile network operators in the country. According to company statement, Engro envisages making Enfrashare a 5,000 BTS tower company by the year 2025.