Hyderabad-based drugmaker Laurus Labs Ltd on Monday raised Rs 395.4 crore (around $58 million) through sale of shares via anchor allotment ahead of its three-day initial public offering (IPO) that opens on Tuesday.
The firm issued 92.38 lakh shares to 25 institutional investors at Rs 428 apiece, the upper end of the Rs 426-428 price band, stock exchange filings showed.
The institutional investors that are acquiring shares in the anchor allotment include Goldman Sachs AMC, HBM Partners, Nomura, Eastspring and Harvard AM. Domestic institutional investors that participated in the anchor allocation include Birla MF, DSP Blackrock, ICICI Prudential AMC, SBI MF, HDFC Life.
The anchor book is that portion of the IPO which bankers can allot to institutional investors on a discretionary basis. Anchor book subscription opens a day before the launch of an IPO and acts as an indicator of institutional investor interest.
Laurus Labs is seeking a valuation of as much as Rs 4,521 crore ($660 million) through the IPO that will close on Thursday, 8 December.
The total size of the offering is about Rs 1,360 crore. This comprises Rs 300 crore to be raised through a fresh issue of shares and the remaining via a sale of shares by existing shareholders. Private equity firms Warburg Pincus and Eight Roads Ventures (formerly Fidelity Growth Partners) will partially exit while Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe will sell its entire stake in the offering.
Laurus Labs filed its IPO proposal with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) on 19 August. It received regulatory clearance for the IPO on 10 October.
Kotak Mahindra Capital, Citigroup Global Markets, Jefferies and SBI Capital Markets are managing the Laurus Labs IPO.
The firm aims to use the IPO money to repay term loans and for general corporate purposes.
The company registered consolidated revenue from operations of Rs 1,783.77 crore in FY2015-16 compared with Rs 1,326.59 crore a year before. It reported consolidated net profit of Rs 132.65 crore for FY2015-16 compared with Rs 68.36 crore in the previous year.
Laurus Labs is seeking to join a string of healthcare companies that have made successful debuts on stock markets over the past year.
Diagnostics chains Dr Lal PathLabs Ltd and Thyrocare Technologies Ltd as well as hospital chain Narayana Hrudayalaya Ltd are among the companies that have successfully gone public over the past year.
Hospital chain operator Aster DM Healthcare Ltd filed documents for an IPO in June while eye-care chain New Delhi Centre For Sight has received SEBI approval for its public issue.
Healthcare has been one of the best performing sectors in terms of share price movement after listings. Drugmaker Alkem Laboratories Ltd, which went public last December, is trading at a 60% premium to its IPO price.
The IPO market in India picked up pace after four years of slow activity in mid-2014 after the BJP-led government took over.
In 2015, 21 companies raised about Rs 14,000 crore, as per stock exchange data.
So far this year, 27 companies have tapped primary markets, collectively raising more than Rs 21,000 crore, the data showed.
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