BackConcor sale sees retail investors bid for twice the shares on offer
Foreign portfolio investors bid for 40% of the shares on offer, while mutual funds bid for 30% and insurance firms for 125% of the stake on offer
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Mumbai: The government’s effort to sell 5% in Container Corp. of India Ltd (Concor) through an offer for sale (OFS) witnessed strong interest on the second day, with retail investors putting in subscriptions for 1.83 times the shares allocated for them, data from stock exchanges show.
Overall, the Concor OFS was subscribed 1.98 times.
On Wednesday, institutional investors and high networth individuals (HNI) had put in subscriptions for twice the number of shares alloted for the category.
Foreign portfolio investors bid for 40% of the shares on offer, while mutual funds bid for 30% and insurance companies for 125% of the stake on offer.
Shares of Concor closed at ₹ 1,163.15 apiece on the BSE, on Thursday, down 2.71%. The benchmark Sensex closed at 24,623.34 points, down 0.69%.
Incidentally, retail investors had bid for only 44% of the shares on offer in the previous divestment offer of NTPC Ltd, which closed on 24 February.
“In the previous OFS issuance of NTPC, the retail subscription was low, but the ones who subscribed managed to make good returns as post the offer the stock price moved up significantly. That experience seems to have driven the retail demand for the Concor offer," said Arun Kejriwal, founder of brokerage firm Kejriwal Research and Investments Services Pvt. Ltd.
The government, on Tuesday, had said that it will sell as many as 9.74 million shares or 5% in the state-controlled logistics firm through the OFS.
A floor price of ₹ 1,195 per share was set. The government will raise around ₹ 1,165 crore from the share sale.
The Concor share sale is the seventh disinvestment offer from the government in this fiscal. Last month, the government raised almost ₹ 5,000 crore by selling 5% of its stake in power producer NTPC Ltd. Apart from NTPC, the government has sold a part of its stake in firms such as Rural Electrification Corp. Ltd, Power Finance Corp. Ltd, India Oil Corp. Ltd, Dredging Corp. of India Ltd and Engineers India Ltd.
So far this fiscal, the government has mobilized ₹ 18,352 crore through minority stake sales.
In the 2016-17 budget, the finance ministry revised the disinvestment target for 2015-16 to ₹ 25,000 crore against the budget estimate of ₹ 69,500 crore.
For 2016-17, it has set a disinvestment target of ₹ 56,500 crore, including ₹ 20,500 crore from strategic sales.
The government is also expected to get almost ₹ 13,784.85 crore (excluding tax on distributing dividend) from Coal India Ltd (CIL), which declared an interim dividend of ₹ 27.40 per share last week. The government holds a 79.64% stake in the company.
It had earlier hired banks to sell 10% in CIL through an offer for sale.
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