Kuwaiti mobile operator Zain said on Wednesday it was working with Swiss bank UBS and other consultants to review its strategy, to boost shareholder value during the financial downturn.
"(Zain) cooperates with UBS and other consultants to study and review Zain's overall strategies, which reflects positively on shareholders' equity," it said in a statement on the bourse website.
The statement follows a Tuesday report in daily Al-Anbaa which cited a quoted Zain official as saying it had no objections to selling its African operations, if the price was right, and had received several offers including one from Europe's largest entertainment group, Vivendi.
Zain's shares were up 5 percent at 0716 GMT in Kuwait, outperforming the market, which was down 0.24 percent.
"There was a lot of speculation that Zain's African unit was not as profitable as it would have liked because of management problems," said Shahid Hameed, Global Investment House head of asset management for the Gulf region.
Zain has spent more than $12 billion in Africa since 2005, including nearly $3 billion in Nigeria, and said it planned to spend up to $2 billion more on the continent this year.
"Africa is a huge part of Zain's business and the expectation is that it would use the money from any sale to buy assets elsewhere that are easier to manage, but at the moment this is all speculation."
A spokesman declined to comment on the story on Tuesday.
In the statement, Zain did not say whether it was specifically reviewing its African operations.
The operator, whose biggest shareholder is Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund, has spent heavily to expand and operates in 23 countries in the Middle East and Africa.