Weekly News Roundup at 10:00 am on 7th January 2024

Let’s begin with some news on the IPOs. Plant-based speciality products company Sanstar Ltd has filed its draft papers with capital markets regulator Sebi to raise Rs 425-500 crore through an initial public offering.The total size of the Initial Public Offering is up to 4.80 crore equity shares, comprising a fresh issue of up to 4 crore shares and an Offer For Sale of up to 80 lakh shares by its promoters and promoter group selling shareholders. The company may consider a pre-IPO placement of up to 40 lakh equity shares. If such placement is completed, the fresh issue size will be reduced. According to market sources, the IPO size is expected to be Rs 425-500 crore.

In some more IPO-related news, solar EPC company Rays Power Infra has filed preliminary papers with capital markets regulator Sebi to raise funds through an initial share sale. The IPO comprises a fresh issuance of equity shares worth up to Rs 300 crore and an offer for sale component of up to 29.95 lakh shares by its promoters. Under the offer for sale, Ketan Mehta will sell up to 14.37 lakh equity shares, while Pawan Kumar Sharma and Sanjay Garudapally will offload 7.78 lakh shares each through the public issue. The company may undertake a pre-IPO placement of its securities worth up to Rs 45 crore, or a secondary sale of up to 14.97 lakh shares by its promoters or a combination thereof.

Over to industry. US-based asset management company Invesco has marked up Swiggy’s fair value for the second time in a row, taking the latest valuation of the food tech aggregator to $8.3 billion, according to a regulatory filing as of October 31, 2023. According to tracxn data, Invesco holds a 2 per cent stake in Swiggy, which was acquired at a cost of approximately $190.5 million. The total value of Invesco’s 28,844 shares in Swiggy stood at $147.6 million at the end of October 2023, reflecting a fair value of $8.3 billion. Invesco had marked up the valuation of Swiggy by around 42 percent to $7.85 billion at the end of July, 2023.

Meanwhile, Government’s total expenditure on explicit subsidies – food, fertiliser and LPG – is likely to drop 28% to Rs 3.98 trillion in the current fiscal year, from Rs 5.49 trillion in Financial Year 23. This is due to the softening of global prices of soil nutrients and the termination of the extra grains supplies under the National Food Securities Act effective December 2022, according to information gathered from various sources. This means subsidy expenditure this year will be the lowest since Financial Year19. In FY21, the government incurred an all-time high subsidy spend of Rs 7.14 trillion partly because of provisioning of Rs 3.8 trillion towards repayment of loans taken from the National Small Savings Funds to finance food subsidies.

Moving on. India’s petroleum sector contributed Rs 3.41 trillion to the exchequer in the first half of the current financial year, down 4.6% on year, according to the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell data. Of this, the sector contributed Rs 1.85 trillion to the centre and Rs 1.56 lakh cr to states. The amounts paid include excise duty, customs duty, royalty rates on crude oil, corporate/income tax, service tax, cess on crude oil, and such other cess and surcharges on petroleum products. In the first half of previous financial year 2022-23, India’s oil and gas sector contributed Rs 3.57 trillion to the exchequer which included Rs 1.97 lakh cr and Rs 1.60 trn to the central and state exchequer respectively.

In another development – India’s manufacturing PMI, maintained by S&P Global, fell to an 18-month low of 54.9 in December from 56.0 the previous month, primarily due to fading demand for “certain types” of products. With the latest reading, manufacturing PMI averaged 55.5 in the October-December quarter of FY24, the lowest in six quarters. Latest data showed that the year-on-year growth in production of core industries fell to a six month low of 7.8 per cent in November. Sequentially too, the core industries’ output declined by 3.4% during the month. The GST collections grew at three-month low of 10.3 per cent in December.

Italian motorcycle maker Ducati has announced that it will launch eight motorcycles in India in 2024. Alongside the 8 launches, Ducati has announced two new showrooms for India in 2024. The new models, unveiled at the Ducati World Premiere 2024, are the Multistrada V4 RS, DesertX Rally, Panigale V4 Racing Replica 2023, Diavel for Bentley, Monster 30° Anniversario, Panigale V4 SP2 30° Anniversario 916, along with the new Streetfighter V4S 2023 which was unveiled globally last year. Ducati is also actively assessing opportunities for network expansion and is considering the possibility of inaugurating a minimum of two additional state-of-the-art dealerships in India in 2024.