One of India’s leading sugar manufacturers, EID Parry, reduced total debt by over 63% in FY22. Both short term loans and long term loans have been brought down sharply and the 63% fall is of the combined debt. As a result, the finance cost also fell by close to 50% YoY. Most sugar companies see huge opportunities in the ethanol blending space and are expanding capacity rapidly. The government has set an export target of 6 million tonnes of sugar in the current sugar cycle year, so that is also a big opportunity basket for Parry.
JSW Energy board has approved the re-organisation of its renewable and thermal businesses. As per the terms of the restructuring, all existing and upcoming renewable energy businesses will be under JSW Energy Neo Ltd, a subsidiary of JSW Energy. The idea is to create a holding structure for the renewable portfolio that is efficient from the point of view of ROI and capital allocation. Above all, it will also facilitate unlock of value by placing stakes in the more sought after renewable business. The target is 20 GW by year 2030.
Indian Oil Corporation paid Rs.2,424 crore as one dividend tranche to the government. This was disclosed by DIPAM. The total dividend received by the government in this fiscal till date is Rs.20,222 crore across state-owned entities. IOCL is the largest refiner and marketer of oil in the country and has 50% market share. In FY21, IOCL had sold 81.027 million metric tonnes of oil. In October, BPCL had paid a whopping Rs.6,665 crore as the final dividend to the government. It may be recollected that BPCL is currently privatisation-bound.
Tega Industries, a major polymer-based mill liners producer, opens its Rs.619 crore IPO on 01-Dec and closes the IPO on 03-Dec. The price band has been fixed at Rs.443-453 per share. It is expected to do an anchor placement a day ahead of its IPO. The entire IPO is an offer for sale by the promoters and early-stage investors, Wagner, to the tune of 136.69 lakh shares. The minimum bid lot is 33 shares and retail investors can bid for a maximum of 13 lots. The overseas business contributes 86.4% of the business of Tega.
In the midst of a slew of thematic funds, Tata MF has filed with SEBI for a global semiconductor fund of fund. Tata MF will hold units of various overseas-listed ETFs that in turn will invest in semiconductor chip companies listed overseas. Globally there are several semiconductor ETFs like iShares Semiconductor ETF, VanEck Semiconductor ETF, SPDR S&P Semiconductor ETF and Fidelity Select Semiconductors Portfolio. The idea is to ride the global shortage of semiconductors which is expected to take 3-4 years to fill up.
On the two days that the stock of Paytm crashed sharply, some of the biggest anchor investors in Paytm like BlackRock and Canada Pensions added Paytm shares aggressively to their portfolios. After falling to a low of Rs.1,271, the stock has since gained 41% from the lows in just about 3 days. One view is that the very signal that giants like BlackRock are doubling down on Paytm will give the much-needed fillip. Even the promoter, Vijay Sekhar Sharma, has said that the early tumble was no indicator of the value of Paytm.
Bharat Electronics has signed an agreement with a US-based drone delivery firm, Dronedek, to manufacture smart-drone delivery mailboxes for the latter. BEL will manufacture drone delivery mailboxes to deploy across the global markets of Dronedek. These are smart mailboxes that facilitate automated and contactless deliveries by unmanned, autonomous aerial vehicles or UAVs. As of now, it is not clear if the Dronedek smart mailbox system would be deployed in India. India is also working on a total Drone policy.
Online low-cost stockbroking platform, Upstox, joins the coveted unicorn club after its latest funding led by Tiger Global. Upstox is expected to have been valued at $3 billion. This makes Upstox the 40th unicorn in 2021. Unicorns are used to describe a private entity that scales a valuation of $1 billion or more. Upstox has been a big beneficiary of the surge in trading and Demat accounts and the rise of digital millennials in the stock markets. Upstox already has the backing of Tiger Global, apart from Kalaari Capital and Ratan Tata.