Rogers to raise $7-billion in ‘structured equity’ deal to reduce debt

Rogers Communications Inc. RCI-B-T is raising $7-billion in “structured equity” to reduce its debt, in a deal that will give a financial investor a minority stake in a regional portion of the company’s wireless network.Rogers will retain control over the infrastructure, while the unnamed investor will take a share of the future income stream from the wireless transport infrastructure. These distributions will fluctuate based on the amount of wholesale data passing through the network, which the company expects to grow over time.While the payouts to the investor will be considered equity distributions, the deal will not involve selling any Rogers shares. The company expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.The deal concerns Rogers’s backhaul networks, which transport data from its towers to its core network. It is separating a portion of this backhaul network into a subsidiary, in which the investor is buying a minority stake. The investor will then receive periodic…