The initial public offering of L&T Infotech Ltd, the technology services arm of engineering giant Larsen & Toubro Ltd, received strong response from institutional and retail investors as the issue was fully subscribed on the first day itself on Monday.
The issue was subscribed 1.23 times after receiving bids for 15.12 million shares at the end of the first day, stock-exchange data show. The issue closes on July 13.
The portion reserved for institutional buyers was subscribed 1.76 times while retail investors’ quota was covered 1.38 times. Affluent individuals and companies bid for a tad less than a fifth of the shares earmarked for them.
The IPO is an offer for sale of 17.5 million shares. This includes 5.25 million shares the company sold last week to anchor investors including private equity firm ChrysCapital and several mutual funds to raise Rs 372.75 crore. It allotted the shares at the upper end of its Rs 705-710 price band for the IPO.
The total IPO size, including the anchor portion, is about Rs 1,240 crore.
The software services company will be the third group firm to list on stock exchanges. While parent L&T has been a public firm for decades, the group's financial services arm L&T Finance Holdings Ltd floated its IPO five years ago.
L&T Infotech had first filed its draft red herring prospectus (DRHP) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in September. The capital markets regulator cleared the IPO proposal in January. It refiled the prospectus in April after withdrawing the previous DRHP due to a change in the offer structure and “other considerationsâ€. SEBI cleared the revised DRHP in May.
India’s sixth-largest IT firm by exports reported revenue of Rs 5,847 crore and a net profit of Rs 922 crore for the financial year ended on 31 March 2016.
L&T Infotech joins about a dozen other Indian companies that have floated IPOs so far this year. In 2015, 21 companies had hit the primary market and two of every three firms beat the 30-stock benchmark Sensex.
India’s stock markets had fallen by a fifth at the start of 2016, shaking the nerves of companies planning to tap into the primary market, but a bounce back over the past couple of months and successful public issues of some companies gave confidence to firms and merchant bankers to go ahead with IPO plans. On Monday, the benchmark BSE Sensex jumped to an 11-month high.
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