LIC IPO subscribed 1.4 times on day 3 on interest by policyholders, staff

Life Insurance Corporation’s (LIC’s) initial public offering (IPO) was subscribed 1.38 times on Friday.

The policyholder quota was subscribed 4 times, employee portion 3.1 times and retail individual investor quota 1.23 times.  The institutional investor and wealthy investor portions are still not fully covered with subscriptions of 56 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively.

Overseas investors have placed bids of just Rs 80 crore in the IPO. Experts most bids in these two categories will come on the final day.

The IPO closes on Monday. Retail investors can also place their bids on weekends. So far the IPO has seen 4.7 million retail applications.

The government has set the price band for the IPO between Rs 902 to Rs 949 per share, with an additional discount of Rs 45 and Rs 60, for retail and policyholders, respectively. At the upper-end of the price-band, LIC will have a market cap of Rs 6 trillion, making it India’s fifth most valuable firm.

The insurance giant had an embedded value (EV) of Rs 5.4 trillion as on September 2021. The IPO values the insurer at 1.1 times EV lower than private sector peers which currently trade between 2 and 3.5 times their EV.