At least 40 mainboard companies have raised Rs 51,365 crore through IPOs in the first half of fiscal year 2024-25, according to the data from Prime Database. This registers a meteoric rise 95 per cent higher than the Rs 26,311 crore mobilized by 31 IPOs in the same period of the previous fiscal year.
The largest IPO in the first half of 2024-25 was from Bajaj Housing Finance, which raised Rs 6,560 crore from investors. It was followed by Rs 6,146 crore IPO of Ola Electric and Rs 4,275 crore IPO of Bharti Hexacom. On the contrary, Kronox Lab was the smallest among them, which raised merely Rs 130 crore.
The average deal size was Rs 1,284 crore, which is sharply up from Rs 849 crore in the year ago period. Interestingly, as many as 22 out of the 40 IPOs came in just the two months of August and September. The highest mobilisation was from the Housing Finance sector at Rs 9,560 crore or 19 per cent of the issue amount.
Investor enthusiasm can be gauged from the fact that, across categories, the average oversubscription stood at 53.72 times, in comparison to 31.25 times in the same period last year, said Pranav Haldea, Managing Director, PRIME Database Group. "Unless there is a black swan event, it is likely to be a record-breaking year for IPOs," he said.
Average listing gain increased to 34.28 per cent, in comparison to 28.65 per cent in the first half of 2023-24. Of the given lot of 38 issues, 30 IPOs gave a return of over 10 per cent. Bajaj Housing Finance gave a stupendous return of 136 per cent on listing day followed by Unicommerce Esolutions (94 per cent) and Premier Energies (87 per cent).
According to the data, new age technology companies made a comeback after two quiet years with five IPOs including Awfis Space Solutions, Go Digit General Insurance, Brainbees Solutions (Firstcry), Le Travenues Technology (Ixigo) and Unicommerce eSolutions raising Rs 8,424 crore.
The IPOs received a strong response from the investors during the bidding. Of the 38, as many as 35 IPOs attracted bids for more than 10 times, while 17 IPOs more than 50 times. Two IPOs were oversubscribed by more than 3 times. The remaining one IPO was oversubscribed between 1 to 3 times during the bidding.
The average number of applications from retail more than doubled to 20.91 lakh in the first half of 2023-24, in comparison to 9.67 lakh in the same period last year. The highest number of applications from retail were received by Bajaj Housing Finance (58.66 lakhs) followed by Arkade Developers (45.37 lakhs) and Northern Arc (45.13 lakhs).
Adding the Rs 66,225 crore raised through QIPs (195 per cent higher than Rs 22,443 crore raised a year ago), contributed to a significant share of the overall public equity fundraising of Rs 1,56,947 crore, an increase of 102 per cent from Rs 77,744 crore raised in the first half of 2023-24.
The pipeline is huge. 26 companies proposing to raise Rs 72,000 crore are presently holding SEBI approval while another 55 companies looking to raise about Rs 89,000 crore are awaiting SEBI approval
"We had forecasted more than 1.5 lakh crores of fund raise via IPOs this year. Increasing number of growth stage businesses shall hit the street. Moreover, we will have a trend of multi-nationals coming to tap the Indian capital market," said Mahavir Lunawat, Managing Director at Pantomath Capital Advisors.
"Besides, several other market liquidity parameters, notably monthly mutual fund flow has doubled since last quarter and we are getting close to Rs 40,000 Crores of money every month. This has fuelled capital market buoyancy phenomenally," Lunawat added.