Life Insurance Corporation’s (LIC’s) initial public offering (IPO) was subscribed 1.66 times at the end of Day 4. The policyholder quota was subscribed 4.67 times, the employee portion 3.54 times, and the retail individual investor quota 1.46 times.
The non-institutional investor portion was fully subscribed on Saturday (1.08 times). However, the qualified institutional buyers (QIB) portion has still not been fully subscribed even at the end of Day 4. It was subscribed 67 per cent at the end of day 4. Most bids in the QIB category are expected to come on the last day of the issue.
The IPO which opened on Wednesday will remain open throughout the weekend and will close on Monday. Market players indicated LIC’s strong brand recall coupled with additional discount for small shareholders has enthused many first-time investors towards the IPO.
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 of 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.
State-owned LIC's IPO will close on May 9. The country's biggest ever public offer is open for subscription on Saturday and Sunday as well.
Meanwhile, LIC in a statement said that a fire broke out at around 6.40 am in the LIC's Jeevan Seva building, Santacruz in Mumbai, which houses SSS divisional office.
"It was restricted to the 2nd floor of the building. Fire services have deployed fire brigades to arrest the fire and they are bringing it under control. There are no casualities or issues affecting personnel. The data centre of LIC which is housed nearby is safe and precautionary measures have been taken to protect our IT assets," it said.
LIC informed that all critical IT (Information Technology) assets for providing service to customers have adequate disaster recovery set-up in place.
Hence, there would not be any problem in providing services to customers, it added.
With inputs from PTI
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