Tata Power plans to invest a whopping Rs60,000 crore in the next 3 years, with nearly 50% of this outlay for the renewables sector. This is the most aggressive capex outlay made by Tata Power. It will not add new coal-based thermal power capacity. Out of the total outlay, Tata Power will invest Rs 15,000 crore in FY24 and progressively scale it each year. It is a brownfield project, which typically costs Rs 5 crore per MW as compared to Rs 8 crore per MW for greenfield projects. Tata Power is yet to sign the PPAs for it.
PCBL Ltd (formerly Phillips Carbon Black) has announced plans to invest Rs3,800 crore in buying out a 100% stake in Aquapharm Chemicals Private Ltd. The acquisition will be financed by PCBL through a mix of internal accruals and external fundraising. This deal is significant as it marks PCBLs’ global foray into the specialty chemicals space. The focus will be on water treatment chemicals and oil and gas chemicals.
Aquapharm Chemicals had net sales of Rs2,045 crore in FY23 and EBIDTA of Rs 417 crore for the full fiscal.
SEBI plans to lower the capital and disclosure requirements for mutual fund houses that run passive investment schemes. Deep disclosures are not needed in this case since they are pegged to underlying indices or asset classes. Existing fund houses can also hive off passive investment schemes into separate entities to leverage more liberal regulations. Today, passive funds account for 17% of the total AUM of the Indian mutual funds segment, and the growth has been phenomenal in the last seven years.
It is now official that Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group, will tender 296.04 lakh shares in TCS, which would be worth Rs 12,284 crore. The total size of the TCS buyback is to the tune of Rs 17,000 crore. The buyback program opens on December 1, 2023, and closes on December 7, 2023. TCS is buying back 4.09 crore shares (1.12% of total equity capital) at a price of Rs 4,150 per share. Under the tender route, the promoters have the option to either participate or abstain from participating in the buyback.
It was a day that belonged to the Adani group, as the stocks of this group surged between 5% and 20% during the day. This was after the Supreme Court had reserved its orders in the matter pertaining to allegations made by Hindenburg Research and the subsequent SEBI allegations. In fact, the 11 listed Adani Group entities saw market cap accretion of more than Rs100,000 crore in a single day. The gains were on the back of improving investor sentiments surrounding the stock. All stocks of Adani group rallied sharply.
Even as FPIs have been largely indifferent in equities, the same FPIs bought debt paper worth Rs 12,400 crore in November 2023. This is the highest flow into debt markets from FPIs since September 2021. On the equity side, the FPIs continued to be net sellers in the secondary markets, but the sharp inflows into IPOs kept the overall equity flows in the month in positive territory. The inclusion of Indian G-Secs in the JP Morgan Government Bond Index Emerging Markets index has triggered all-round buying in debt paper.
Aster DM Healthcare approved the sale of its Middle East business to Alpha GCC Holdings for $1.01 billion. The buyer, Alpha GCC Holdings, will be owned by the Aster DM promoter group. A Middle East-based private equity firm, Fajr Capital Advisors, will be the counterparty to the deal. After the completion of the deal, the buyer will qualify as a member of the promoter group since the promoters of the company intend to acquire over 20% of the buyer’s shareholding. The healthcare space has seen a lot of fresh action in PE deals.
Alipay (part of the Ant group) will sell Zomato shares worth $400 million on Wednesday. It will offload its entire 3.44% stake in Zomato via this deal. The sale will be done via block deals. However, the company would not be overly worried as there are likely to be a large number of domestic and global investors willing to put their money on Zomato at this juncture. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley will be the advisors to the deal. It may be recollected that the stock of Zomato has rallied nearly 90% in this year.