New Delhi: Nxtdigital has announced that the company’s rights issue of equity shares of two shares for every five shares held in the company (aggregating a total of 96,20,463 shares) which closed on 29 November was subscribed 1.94 times.
The company has reported receiving a total of Rs. 560.13 crores or 194 per cent of the Rights Issue size of Rs. 288.61 crores. This is a clear statement of confidence in the company demonstrated by the shareholders and vindicates the vision of the media group in continuing to transform to an end-to-end digital solutions platform, the company said on Wednesday.
“The Rights Issue was another positive step taken by the company towards our stated objective of reducing our overall debt,” said Nxtdigital MD and CEO Vynsley Fernandes. “With this, the debt-to-equity ratio is expected to significantly come down to approximately 1.5 times vis-à-vis the pre-issue debt-to-equity ratio of over four times. This is, without doubt, a robust position from which to continue on our path of digital transformation”.
The company has also been taking steps to liquidate non-core assets and pare its debt thereby.
According to Nxtdigital's whole-time director and CFO Amar Chintopanth, the company has already received 25 per cent of the total consideration of Rs 69.30 crores in line with its objectives of paring debt, against the sale of land at Hyderabad. “Considering that the conditions precedent for the sale have been completed within the agreed timelines the company expects the transaction to close before the end of the financial year and the entire proceeds to be realised. Such proceeds would also be utilised towards reducing of the company’s debt”.
The integrated digital platforms company had recently launched its innovative concept of owned-and-operated NXTHUBs across the country – which besides video and broadband, promise to be future-ready to offer customers a slew of additional digital services including OTT and WiFi.
The company is also working to operationalise the infrastructure sharing model with other Multi-System Operators (MSOs) on HITS. The model is set to help MSOs not just reduce cost and improve their quality of service, but also facilitate their expansion into markets, especially rural, where connectivity costs are a deterrent to digital proliferation, it added further.
