Religare enjoys premium listing at the bourses
21 November 2007

That the broking business is here to stay has been amply demonstrated by the premium listing enjoyed by Ranbaxy-promoted Religare Enterprises Limited today at the bourses.

The shares with a nominal value of Rs10 each and priced at Rs185 after the book-building process, debuted at a premium of 75 per cent at Rs323.75 and rapidly accelerated to Rs601 on the National Stock Exchange.

On the Bombay Stock Exchange, it started at Rs323.75 before touching Rs600, and closed for the day at Rs519, at a stupendous first-day premium of 180 per cent. This is all the more notable on a day the benchmark Sensex fell by over 600 points and the Nifty declined by more than 200 points.

The markets had expected a significant upsurge in the share price on its debut considering the tremendous interest the IPO had generated. The issue, which was open between 29 October and 1 November, and priced between Rs160 and Rs185, garnered an oversubscription of over 160 times.

While qualified institutional bidders bid for 185 times the shares allocated to them, even the retail portion was oversubscribed 93 times.

Promoted by the promoters of Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited, Religare's issue has been graded by ICRA Limited and assigned the IPO Grade 3 on a five point scale. The net proceeds of the issue will be utilised towards the expansion of domestic operations as well as the network of branches of two of its subsidiaries, Religare Securities Limited and Religare Insurance Broking Limited; funding the retail finance business as well as funding the leading business, through investment in its subsidiaries, Religare Finvest Limited and Religare Finance Limited.

Religare Enterprises Limited is a holding company of 11 subsidiaries, which are engaged in the business of providing a wide range of financial products and services targeted at the retail, high net worth individuals and the corporate and institutional clients. Along with its various subsidiaries, it offers a wide range of services ranging from equities, commodities, insurance broking, to wealth advisory, portfolio management services, personal finance services, investment banking and institutional broking services. It has divided its product and service offering under three broad client interface categories: "Retail Spectrum", "Wealth Spectrum" and "Institutional Spectrum".

Religare has a presence throughout the country, with more than 1200 operational outlets across 350-plus cities and towns. The company had issued 76 lakh shares and mopped up Rs.141 crore from the markets, which it intends to use for aggressive expansion plans.

The earnings per share (EPS) of the current financial year are expected to be Rs12, while the issue had been priced at 14 times the estimated FY 2009 EPS of Rs13. This phenomenal listing has also raised expectations for another financial services firm Edelweiss which is going to list soon and had also attracted 110 times subscription to its IPO.

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