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Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Jio Platforms Ltd. drew more than $25 billion in bids from large investors for the anchor portion of its initial public offering, more than 30 times the shares on offer, ahead of a $3.2 billion listing set to be India's largest.
Jio, the telecom and digital arm of Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd., allotted about 72.5 million shares to 212 anchor investors on Monday at 1,119 rupees each, the top of its price band, raising 8,109.85 crore rupees ($854 million). Bids for the anchor book exceeded 2.5 lakh crore rupees ($26.3 billion).
Life Insurance Corp. of India, the state-run insurer, received the largest allocation at 499.98 crore rupees ($52.7 million), or 6.17% of the anchor portion. New World Fund Inc. took 486.27 crore rupees ($51.2 million), the Government of Singapore 340.93 crore rupees ($35.9 million), SBI Focused Fund 315 crore rupees and BNP Paribas Financial Markets 303.25 crore rupees.
BlackRock Inc., Fidelity, Capital Group, T. Rowe Price, Schroders, JPMorgan Asset Management, Franklin Templeton, Janus Henderson, Allianz Global Investors and Ninety One also bought shares, along with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the Florida Retirement System and the California State Teachers' Retirement System. Some large investors sought allocations of $750 million to more than $1 billion each.
Indian funds took a large share of the book. Ninety-five schemes from 25 domestic mutual fund houses were allotted about 24.9 million shares worth 2,784.96 crore rupees ($293 million), or 34.34% of the anchor portion. Insurers and pension funds, including HDFC Life, SBI Life and ICICI Prudential Life, received 13.44%.
India's biggest IPO
The public offer opens on Wednesday and closes on Oct. 23. Jio is selling up to 270 million new shares at 1,065 to 1,119 rupees ($11.22 to $11.79) each, which would raise 28,755 crore rupees to 30,213 crore rupees ($3.03 billion to $3.18 billion). No existing shareholder is selling.
At the top of the range, Jio would be valued at about 10.3 lakh crore rupees, or roughly $108 billion. That would place it among India's four most valuable listed companies and make the offering larger than Hyundai Motor India Ltd.'s 27,870 crore rupee IPO in 2024, the current record.
Up to 27,500 crore rupees ($2.9 billion) of the proceeds will go toward repaying borrowings at Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd., the group's mobile network operator, with the rest for general corporate purposes.
The listing is the first share sale by a Reliance company since Reliance Petroleum Ltd. went public in 2006. It follows the September debut of the National Stock Exchange of India. Money raised from IPOs in India this year has risen 8.3% to $12.65 billion, according to LSEG data.
Ambani's stake
Reliance owns 5.94 billion Jio shares, or 66.43% of the company. Its stake will fall to about 64.5% after the new shares are issued. At the top of the price band, Reliance's holding is worth about 6.64 lakh crore rupees ($70 billion).
Ambani, chairman and managing director of Reliance, controls the conglomerate through his family's promoter group, which owned 50.48% of Reliance at the end of June after buying shares in the market during the quarter.
Meta Platforms Inc. owns 9.98% of Jio through Jaadhu Holdings, and Google International holds 7.73%. Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, KKR and Vista Equity Partners each own 2.31%. Most of those investors bought in during 2020, when Jio raised more than $20 billion from global backers.
Jio started its mobile service in 2016 with free voice calls and cheap data, upending India's telecom market. It had 533.3 million subscribers at the end of June and carries nearly 60% of the country's data traffic, according to the company. Its rivals include Bharti Airtel Ltd. and Vodafone Idea Ltd.
Ambani's elder son, Akash Ambani, leads the business, which also includes cloud, artificial intelligence and enterprise services.
Rupee figures were converted at 94.95 rupees per U.S. dollar.
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