Piramal Enterprises moves SEBI to quench 'misleading rumours'

Piramal Enterprise has filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Board of India regarding misleading rumours about the company. In a disclosure to the stock exchanges, the company said, "There are certain market participants that are spreading false/misleading rumours against the company’s financial services business, in an attempt to create panic amongst various stakeholders."

In the interest of all our stakeholders, Piramal Enterprises has filed a complaint with SEBI against publishing and spreading misleading rumours about the company on blogs, social media platforms and WhatsApp.

Earlier, Geojit Securities has dropped its coverage on Piramal Enterprises. In a note, the broking firm said "owing to changes in our coverage universe, we are discontinuing our coverage on Piramal Enterprises Ltd. We had a buy rating on the stock with a target price of Rs 2,119, as per report dated 29 August 2019. Henceforth, our recommendation is no longer valid."

The stock of Piramal Enterprises in early trade on Thursday hit a fresh year low of Rs 1,316 on the NSE. It slumped 42 per cent year to date as against the BSE Sensex's gain of 4.94 per cent.

The company statement to exchanges added that it continues to maintain healthy asset quality, with GNPA below 1 per cent for the last 14 quarters.

PEL’s financial services business is amongst the least leveraged among major NBFCs/HFCs, with a debt-to-equity multiple of 3.7x (and only 2.1x considering investments in Shriram companies) and Piramal Capital & Housing Finance’s had a tier 1 ratio of 28.8 per cent, well above the minimum regulatory requirement.

The company remains committed to bringing in about Rs 8,000-10,000 crore of equity in the financial services business during this fiscal year, which would further reduce leverage to less than 2x times, the statement also said and added promoter holding in PEL remains at 46 per cent – highest amongst sizeable financial services institutions in India.