Etisalat has sold 43.75 million shares in Saudi affiliate Etihad Etisalat (Mobily), generating returns of Dh2.33 billion ($634.3 million).

Profit from the sale will be counted in the company’s second-quarter earnings, it said in a statement on the Abu Dhabi bourse website.
The company sold the shares at SR55 riyals ($14.67), or a total SR2.41 billion, it said.
Etisalat said it sold the stake in Mobily, as required by its licence. It did not give details.
Etisalat’s holding in the firm is now 26.25 per cent, compared with 35 per cent earlier.
Six Saudi institutional investors, including state-run Public Pension Agency and General Organisation for Social Insurance (Gosi), have held 45 per cent of Mobily’s shares.
Mobily, one of two mobile telephone service providers operating in a country of 24 million people, started operations in mid-2005. It has since claimed a 40 per cent market share.
Its 2007 profit almost doubled to SR1.38 billion on a 44.3 per cent increase in sales to SR8.44 billion.
Mobily and its rival Saudi Telecom Co will face more competition this year when a group led by Kuwait’s Mobile Telecommunications Co (Zain) starts operating a third mobile network in the kingdom.
Meanwhile, the UAE’s Etisalat has chosen Huawei Technologies to build a large-scale commercial Fibre to the Home (FTTH) network in the UAE.
The planned GPON FTTH network by Etisalat will provide ultra-high speed connectivity for families and businesses through the use of optical line terminal (OLT) and optical network terminals (ONT), said a statement.
These terminals can accommodate various application scenarios such as commercial buildings, residential apartments and villas. By the end of 2008, Etisalat expects its direct access to the FTTH customer base to be in the hundreds of thousands.