Photo: The Canadian Press
Telus Corp. will hit the road on Monday to try and woo investors for its public offering of subsidiary Telus International, as it spins off its customer experience business from its telecom offerings.
The US$958.3 million public offering for the subsidiary will bring on outside investors to boost its digital and artificial intelligence business, according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Telus Corp. is the largest client and controlling shareholder of Telus International and would own about two-thirds of Telus International after the public offering.
Telus International expects to price its shares between US$23 and US$25 each on the New York Stock Exchange, and the company will keep $493.9 million in proceeds. The IPO money will help it pay down debt, including debt raised to acquire other companies.
Investors would be buying into Telus’ business for games, communications, media, e-commerce, fintech, health care and hospitality, as well as recently acquired data annotation company Lionbridge AI.
By opening the business to the public stock market, Telus is drawing back the curtain on a fast-growing part of its business.
Telus says that last year, the Telus International businesses made between US$95 million and US$102 million in net income. Telus International’s revenue has grown to more than $1 billion in 2019 from $573.2 million in 2017. Parent company Telus Corp. has $15.3 billion in annual revenue.
The Telus International companies have about 600 clients, including Uber, TikTok, PayPal, MasterCard, Wix Fitbit, TransUnion and Zara. Social games company Zynga, initially worked with Telus to do customer support for the game Farmville, and now works with Telus on its current portfolio of games, which includes Words with Friends.
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