Shares in Bharti Airtel rose nearly 2% on July 15 after the company said it would allocate 7.11 crore shares to Google as a priority.

In a regulatory filing, Bharti Airtel said: “We would like to inform you that ‘the company’s special rights issue committee has approved a pre-emptive rights issue of 7,11,76,839 shares of Rs 5 par value to Google International LLC at an issue price of Rs 734 per share.”

The stock traded 1.72% higher at Rs 653.05 on the BSE at 9.58 am. Shares traded at a 14% premium to their last closing price.

After the rights issue, the telecom giant said that Google would hold about 1.20% of the company’s total post-issue share capital, or about 1.17% when fully diluted. Google paid Rs 5,224 crore for the stake.

Google also owns a 7.73% stake in Jio Platforms, which operates Jio, a direct competitor to Bharti Airtel. Jio Platforms is majority-owned by Reliance Industries.

Bharti Airtel is a favourite of telecom industry analysts as they see it as a direct beneficiary of Vodafone Idea‘s woes. Furthermore, it is one of the strongest telecom operators with a diverse customer base.

According to data provided by Bloomberg, Bharti Airtel had 32 “buy” calls and two ‘hold’ and one ‘sell’.