Shares of Honasa Consumer Ltd, Mamaearth's parent, extended their sharp gains for the second consecutive session in Friday's trade. The stock jumped 15per cent to hit an all-time high of Rs 487. At this price, the scrip has gained 35 per cent in just two days and a whopping 41% since its muted stock market debut. Shares of Honasa Consumer jumped 20% on Thursday, a day after it reported a quarterly profit surge. Honasa’s profit for the quarter ending September 30 nearly doubled to Rs 29 crore from a year ago, led by strong volume growth and higher margins. Core profit margins rose to 8.1% from 6.4% a year ago, while sales volumes jumped 21%. “Honasa Consumer has been a notable outlier among digital-first beauty and personal care brands in India, expect sector-leading revenue growth with improving profitability,” Jefferies analysts said in a note, retaining their “buy” rating. Earlier this month, Honasa’s Rs 1,700-crore IPO was subscribed 7.6 times with institutional investors subscribing 11.5 times and retain investors subscribing mere 1.35 times. The firm raised Rs 765 crore from anchor investors and apart from marquee FPIs, domestic mutual funds also invested in the anchor book. Seven prominent mutual funds were allocated 33.1% of the anchor allocation and they included ICICI Prudential, Aditya Birla Sun Life, Nippon, Axis, Canara Robeco, Invesco and mutual fund of White Oak. The mutual funds faced backlash on social media for investing in an IPO that is a pure Offer For Sale for most of the existing investors and that the asking valuation of Rs 10,000 crore is massive. Many had said that mutual funds can't justify investing in such overvalued IPOs and that they would rather stop their SIP in such mutual funds. However, the fund managers will find themselves vindicated in the recent surge in the stock. "Never forget there is a reason why they are the fund manager and you’re not," quipped an user of X platform (formerly Twitter). "For all those pundits giving gyan to mutual fund managers why they did this, this is retail money how can they do this. Think long term, they know better than you," said another X user. "MF have more than 30 years of outstanding track record in India with million of investors trusting investing and being rewarded," said another X user.
