Comments
The Centre is set to sell a 5 per cent stake in the country’s largest power producer, NTPC, on Tuesday, through the revamped offer-for-sale (OFS) mechanism.
At the floor price of ₹122, the sale is expected to bring in around ₹5,028 crore for the government, making it the second-largest PSU disinvestment in fiscal 2015-16. This is the fourth disinvestment of the public sector power producer since 2004. In an official communication, the Centre said it will sell 41.22 crore shares in NTPC Ltd, or 5 per cent of its shareholding, on Tuesday.
New guidelines Under the new ‘offer-for-sale’ norm, issued by SEBI last week, the advance notice period that companies have to give to the stock market has been reduced to one day. Now, companies can notify their OFS plans to stock exchanges a day before the share sale and latest by 5 pm as against the earlier two-day notice.
Only non-retail investors will be permitted to place their bids on the first day of the OFS through stock exchanges, while retail investors can bid on the second. However, non-retail investors who have placed their bids on the first day will be permitted to revise their bids on the second day.
Retail investors will be offered a 5 per cent discount.
After the sale, the government’s stake in NTPC is expected to come down to 69.96 per cent from 74.96 per cent currently.
The NTPC stake sale could be the last major disinvestment this fiscal. The Centre has this year raised ₹13,340 crore from stake sales in half a dozen PSUs, including Engineers India Ltd, Indian Oil Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, and Rural Electrification Corporation.
Budget target The Budget had set a target of ₹69,500 crore from disinvestment proceeds, including ₹41,000 crore from minority stake sales and ₹28,500 crore from strategic stake sales.
NTPC reported a 19 per cent drop in net profit for the third quarter of 2015-16 at ₹2,492.87 crore compared with ₹ 3,074 crore in the same quarter last year. Its net revenue for the quarter stood at ₹17,413.31 crore (₹18,857 crore).
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.