Education-focussed publishing house S Chand & Company is planning to raise about ₹727 crore through an initial public offering, paving the way for the partial exit of private equity firm Everstone Capital.

The offer opens on April 26 and closes on April 28. The New Delhi-based company has fixed a price band of ₹660-670 a share. The face value is ₹5. The offer consists of a fresh issue of shares totalling up to ₹325 crore and an offer-for-sale of 60 lakh shares of the promoters, shareholders and Everstone Capital Partners.

S Chand, which provides educational content for higher education and early-learning segments spanning Kindergarten to Std XII, had received regulatory clearance for the IPO on March 3 from SEBI. Following the IPO, the company intends to list the shares both on the BSE and the NSE.

The company, in its DRHP, had mentioned that it was scouting to acquire regional content houses, even as it plans to further its presence in the higher education business, particularly in the test preparation market.

“We had made three large acquisitions in the publishing space over a 4-4.5-year period. We are always on the lookout for acquisitions, but they should have a strategic fit to our business and they should come at the right valuations,” Himanshu Gupta, Managing Director, S Chand, said.

Everstone Capital Everstone Capital, which had invested a total of ₹260 crore in two tranches, is partly exiting S Chand by selling close to 50 per cent of its total stake in the company. The PE firm, which made its first tranche of investment in 2012, would get about ₹320 crore when it pares 50 per cent of the stake it holds or about 48 lakh shares.

JM Financial, Axis Capital and Credit Suisse are the bankers to the issue.

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