Vedanta stocks in news as THIS promoter entity sells Rs 1,737 crore shares in block deal

Shares of Anil Agarwal-led Vedanta Ltd will be in focus on Friday morning after a promoter group entity Finsider International Company sold 65,518,600 Vedanta shares, or 1.7 per cent stake, on BSE, at an average price of Rs 265.14 apiece, worth Rs 1,737.16 crore. Finsider International Company owned 16,34,64,540 shares or 4.4 per cent stake in Vedanta as on December 31, 2023. With the fresh stake sale, Finsider International Company is left with 2.7 per cent stake in Vedanta. There were earlier reports that Adani group investor GQG Partners, which is run by Rajiv Jain, was looking to buy stake in the company. The bulk deal data did not reveal buyer/buyers name.

GQG held stakes in a dozen of domestic listed companies such as ITC Ltd, Patanjali Foods, JSW Energy Ltd, IDFC First Bank Ltd, GMR Airports Infrastructure Ltd and Max Healthcare Institute Ltd. It owned significant stakes in a handful of Adani group companies such as Ambuja Cements Ltd, Adani Green Energy Ltd, Adani Power Ltd, Adani Enterprises Ltd and Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd.

GQG was the same company, which emerged as the first strategic investor in Adani group in the aftermath of scathing Hindenburg Research report that had wiped $150 billion market capitalisation off Adani group firms.

In the December quarter, Vedanta's performance substantially improved, driven by better-than-estimated performance across segments. An extension of the maturity of bonds at HoldCo by three years provides adequate liquidity comfort to the company in the near term, Motilal Oswal Securities noted.

To account for its better performance, comfortable debt position, higher volumes, and improved EBITDA guidance by the management, this brokerage upped its Ebitda estimates for Vedanta by up to 15 per cent. The brokerage said the Vedanta stock was adequately priced in and suggested a 'Neutral' rating on it with a target of Rs 270.

In another note, PhillipCapial retained its positive outlook on Vedanta as it felt that commodity prices have legroom to improve from here driven by Chinese stimulus and improved demand in H2Fy24. The demerger of businesses and potential sales of ferrous division will provide further flexibility to promoter Vedanta Resources in terms of debt management, it said.

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