The Initial Public Offer of state- run National Buildings Construction Corporation Ltd (NBCC) today hit the capital market, with investors bidding for about 1% of shares under offer by early afternoon.
NBCC is the government's third disinvestment candidate in the current fiscal, after Follow-on Public Offer of Power Finance Corp (PFC) in May 2011 and sale of shares through a one-day auction of ONGC earlier this month.
The government is looking to raise an estimated Rs 120 crore through NBCC IPO, while it has raised a total of Rs 13,894 crore from PFC's FPO and ONGC share sale.
The NBCC IPO, which opened this morning and would close on March 27, attracted bids for about 116,000 shares, creating demand worth over Rs one crore, by 1315 hours.
The response was muted to NBCC offer during the initial hours, when compared to shares being sold in private sector entity Godrej Properties today through an Institutional Placement Programme (IPP).
Godrej Properties is selling a total of 74,42,555 shares through the IPP, which opened for bidding at 1000 hours and would close at 1700 hours this evening. By 1300 hours, the offer had attracted bids for over 41 lakh shares, or more than half of the offer size.
A total of 12 million shares have been proposed to be sold in the NBCC IPO, for which the price-band has been prescribed at Rs 90-106 per share.
NBCC provides project management consultancy services for construction projects, civil infrastructure for power sector and real estate development.
Credit rating agency CARE has assigned 'IPO Grade 4' to the proposed NBCC IPO, indicating above average fundamentals.
IDBI Capital and Enam are merchant bankers to the issue.