Retail investors were underwhelmed by the NTPC offer-for-sale on Wednesday, as reflected in their failure to subscribe fully to the retail portion despite an additional 5 per cent discount on the floor price, and a 20 per cent reservation of the share offer.

As against 8.24 crore shares on offer in the retail portion, investors bid for only 3.64 shares, or 44.11 per cent.

Overall, however, the NTPC offer was subscribed three times, largely with the backing of institutional investors. This is considerably better than the 2013 OFS, which was subscribed 1.7 times.

Most of the retail bids on Wednesday came in the ₹122-122.4 range. Today, the stock ended down 4.2 per cent at ₹118.7 on the BSE.

According to market participants, the stock was ruling steady around ₹121-22 till 1 p.m., but corrected after that.

The OFS window was open on Wednesday exclusively for retail investors. The non-retail portion was subscribed by about 2.5 times.

According to reports, insurance companies, especially LIC, and foreign institutional investors, had extended strong support to the OFS. Most of the bids in the non-institutional category were received in the ₹122-123.5 range. The Centre aims to mop up about ₹5,030 crore through the issue.

At the OFS floor of ₹122, NTPC is trading at 10 and 1.1 times FY17 estimated earnings and book value, respectively, which is lower than the historical trend of 13 times and 1.6 times respectively. NTPC’s OFS is the first after SEBI tweaked rules last week. While only institutional and non-retail investors can place their bids on the offer day, only retail investors and non-retail investors who placed their bids on T-day and carried forward their bids can do so on Day 2.

Raises ₹655 cr debentures In a separate notification to the stock exchanges, NTPC said it has raised ₹655 crore through private placement of secured non-convertible debentures at a coupon of 8.33 per cent per annum with a five-year maturity.

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