NHPC public offer subscribed 24 times

The secondary market appears to be in the grip of swine flu in the last two trading sessions,but the primary market is gearing up to give some reasons for investors to rejoice. The latest public offering,also the first PSU divestment this year,of NHPC which closed on Wednesday has received good response from investors. The NHPC IPO has been subscribed 23.68 times according to data from National Stock Exchange. NHPC is likely to get listed by the first week of September. NHPCs IPO was the largest in terms of number of shares offered and second largest in terms of funds to be raised in the country till date. The NHPC issue received bids for over 3,971.62 crore shares against 167.73 crore on offer,as per the data available on the NSE.

The issue received maximum bids from institutional and high net-worth individuals which will encourage other public sector firms to take the IPO route to raise funds. According to market sources,the portion reserved for high networth individuals and institutional investors got subscribed by over 56 times and 29 times respectively. While the retail investors portion was subscribed 3.11 times and the employees portion received bids for 0.53 times the shares on offer. The shares of the company are expected to be listed at the upper end of price band of Rs 36. The price band of the issue was fixed between Rs 30-36. NHPC plans to raise over Rs 6,000 crore at the upper end of the price band.

Analysts said being a public sector firm,NHPC has received attention from various categories of investors. This is the first stake sale by a state-run company in the last one and a half years after REC raised over Rs 1,600 crore in February 2008. Enam Securities,Kotak Mahindra Capital Co and SBI Capital Markets managed the NHPC public offer.