Adani Wilmar recovers after weak listing to close 15% higher

Shares of Adani Wilmar Ltd closed their first day of trading at ₹265.20 on the BSE, up 15.3% from the issue price, staging a recovery after opening weak at ₹221. The company, the latest from Adani group to go public, had priced its shares in IPO at ₹230 per share.

The share sale, open for subscription between 27 and 31 January, was subscribed 17.37 times. Adani Wilmar raised ₹3,600 crore in the IPO.

On 6 February, Mint reported that shares of Adani Wilmar were available at a premium of ₹28 in the grey market, after hitting a high of ₹35 earlier. “Tepid listing of Adani Wilmar can be attributed to weak market sentiments; otherwise, fundamentals and valuations were good for this IPO,” said Santosh Meena, head of research, Swastika Investmart Ltd.

Likhita Chepa, senior research analyst at CapitalVia Global Research said that long-term investors and investors looking to buy the stock on the listing day can consider holding or buying this stock, given its wide distribution, healthy financials, strong brand recall, increasing reach and household consumption. Adani Wilmar, a joint venture between Adani Enterprises Ltd and Wilmar International Ltd, is the owner of the Fortune brand of edible oils. It has the largest range of edible oils comprising soya bean, sunflower, mustard, and rice bran. Its Fortune brand of oil has around 20% market share in India.

Adani Wilmar is the seventh listed Adani group company. Other listed entities include Adani Enterprises, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones Ltd, and Adani Transmission Ltd. The listing of Adani Wilmar comes at a time when the group’s billionaire founder Gautam Adani overtook Reliance Industry’s Mukesh Ambani to become the richest Indian, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

The 59-year-old mogul’s net worth reached $88.5 billion on Monday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, eclipsing Ambani’s $87.9 billion. With an almost $12 billion jump in his personal fortune, Adani is the world’s biggest wealth-gainer this year.

Some of Adani Group’s listed stocks have soared more than 600% in the past two years on bets his push into green energy and infrastructure will pay off as Modi looks to revive the $2.9 trillion economy and meet the India’s carbon net-zero target by 2070. MSCI Inc.’s decision to include more Adani companies in its Indian benchmark index has also meant any fund tracking the gauge will have to buy the shares.

Bloomberg contributed to the copy.