Bharti Hexacom, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel has raised Rs1,924 crore through its anchor placement in the stock market, a day ahead of the IPO opening on April 03, 2024. Some of the marquee investors in the anchor placement were the Capital Group, Fidelity, Blackrock, and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA). That is 45% of the IPO size of Rs4,275 crore. There was strong demand with about 70-80 institutional investors participating in the anchor offer and was subscribed nearly 30 times. The IPO is entirely an OFS, by the state owned TCIL.
TPG had shelved plans to rope in a private equity investor for its investee company, Sai Life Sciences. Now it has selected 4 investment bankers; Kotak Mahindra, Jefferies, IIFL Capital and Morgan Stanley for a public issue, which will be a combination of fresh issue and an offer for sale (OFS). In 2018, TPG had infused $135 million into Sai Life Sciences and currently holds 43.4% stake in the company. Sai Life Sciences is a Hyderabad based pharma CRDMO company and plans to raise up to Rs5,500 crore thorough the IPO route.
World Bank raised its India GDP forecast for FY25 by bps from 6.4% to 6.6%. This is sharply lower than the other estimates, which range between 6.8% and 7.0% for FY25. In FY25, the World Bank expects a slight slowdown in growth to reflect deceleration in investment activity. However, inflation pressures are likely to subside. The government fiscal deficit and the government debt is also likely to ease in the year. India has been the fastest growing large economy in the world for the last 2 years and likely to sustain the edge.
Ultratech Cement, India’s largest cement player with installed capacity of 152 million tonnes per annum (MTPA), plans to invest Rs32,400 crore via capex in the next 3 years. It took Ultratech 36 years to scale 100 MTPA capacity, but the next 50 MTPA was added in just 5 years. In last 20 years, the cement capacity of Ultratech has grown 11-fold; much faster than the industry average. Currently, another35.5 MTPA of capacity expansion is under works across 16 locations. It is also closing out buyout of Kesoram Cements.
There are some news of slowing on the new projects front. The value of new projects announced, fell by 29% to Rs11.3 trillion in the March 2024 quarter. This is a continuation of the trend of the last 2 quarters. This does raise question about the growth in private capex. The latest CMIE data indicates that in Q4, the private and public sector investments faltered; which could be partly attributed to some degree of caution ahead of the elections and the government commitment to rein in fiscal deficit to 5.8% of GDP in FY24.
India’s manufacturing PMI for March 2024 expanded further to 59.1, from 26.9 in February. This marks a 16-year high for the PMI manufacturing and reflects strongest increases in output and new orders since October 2020. The PMI has got a further boost wit the supply chain constraints being gradually eased at a global level. However, the inflation in input costs picked up during the quarter. Interestingly, the pace of new export orders increased at the fastest pace since May 2022; despite the headwinds in the Red Sea.
Hindustan Zinc announced its highest-ever quarterly refined metal production at 273 kt during Q4FY24. The sequential growth was 6%, while the yoy accretion was around 1%. The sequential growth was led by better plant availability. Refined zinc output grew 9% QOQ at 220 kt, while refined lead production was down 2% at 53 kt during th3 fourth quarter. Overall mined metal production grew 11% QOQ to 299 kt, on the back of improved mix of mined metal grades and higher ore production. Silver output was up 2% yoy.
For the month of January 2024, Reliance Jio added 4.18 million mobile users, while Bharti Airtel was close behind adding 3.6 million subscribers, as per data put out by TRAI. Airtel had highest active user addition in January. Jio took its total base of mobile users to 46.39 crore while the Airtel mobile base increased to 38.25 crore subscribers. Vodafone Idea continued to lose subscribes for the 34th month in a row, as it lost 15 lakh users in Jan-24, shrinking its base further to just 22.15 crore subscribers. BSNL also depleted share.