(Reuters) – U.S. wireless carrier T-Mobile US Inc <TMUS.O> said it has priced a sale of its shares at $103 each in a deal that will see SoftBank Group <9984.T> divest a portion of its stake – a major step in the Japanese conglomerate’s plan to sell assets.
The pricing comes after SoftBank unveiled a series of transactions on Monday to divest more than $20 billion of stock in T-Mobile, as it seeks funding for a $41 billion share buybacks and debt reduction plan.
The sale price is a 4% discount to T-Mobile’s Tuesday closing price.
Together with SoftBank’s already announced monetisation of stakes in e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding <BABA.N> and wireless carrier Softbank Corp <9434.T>, “we now believe the selling is complete,” Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Chris Lane wrote in a note to clients.
The injection of funds will relieve pressure on SoftBank after investments from Chief Executive Masayoshi Son and his $100 billion Vision Fund have soured and hammered the group’s earnings.
SoftBank has spent 500 billion yen ($4.7 billion) on a share buyback plan that will total up to 2.5 trillion yen. Son is due to address shareholders on Thursday in his first public appearance since May’s earnings presentation.
(Reporting by Joshua Franklin in New York and Sam Nussey in Tokyo; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Christopher Cushing)
