Spice cheers; Suryachakra yet to rev up

The initial public offering of Spice Communications received a buoyant response, while Suryachakra Power Corporation failed to charm the investors.

The Noida-based cellular operator, Spice's public offering of 113 million equity shares, which opened for subscription on the BSE yesterday, was subscribed by nearly 3.5 times (over 387 million bids), according to the BSE data at 6.30 pm. The shares are priced in a band of Rs 41-46 a share.

The issue was subscribed by a mere 0.15 per cent (1.5 lakh bids) on the first day, but the applications kept pouring in on the next day. The issue will constitute 16.39 per cent of the fully diluted post-issue equity share capital of the company.

A majority of the IPO proceeds will be used for the repayment of debt, payment of licence fee for national (NLD) and international long distance (ILD) communication segments and payment to vendors for network equipment.

For the six months ended December 2006, the company posted a net loss of Rs 41.81 crore on net revenues of Rs 394 crore. The issue closes on June 27.

Suryachakra Power Corporation's 34 million IPO, which also opened for subscription yesterday, received bids for 53 per cent of the shares on offer. The company has received 17.908 million bids so far, according to the NSE data at 6.30 pm.

The qualified institutional buyers (QIB) portion was subscribed by 1.0562 times, while the retail portion was subscribed by a mere 0.0184 times.

The non-institutional investor portion has not garnered any response so far. The price band for the issue has been fixed between Rs 17 and Rs 20 a share.

The issue would constitute 44.37 per cent of the fully diluted post issue paid-up capital of the company. The proceeds from the issue will be used to set up two biomass power plants for its subsidiary in Parbhani and for meeting the working capital requirements for power trading. The issue closes on June 29.