Adani Group stocks and the company’s promoter pledging issue refuse to stay out of the news. On Tuesday, an article from The Ken claimed that Adani promoter margin debt linked to pledged shares may not have been repaid fully contradicting an earlier statement from the Group.
Adani Group in its response has however refuted the news article with its filings in BSE on March 29 and re-iterated its earlier statements on lowered promoter pledging along with the latest figures.
As can be analysed from the filings, this decrease in promoter pledging is significant in the case of Adani Ports and Adani Enterprises, while in the case of Adani Green and Adani Transmission, the decline is not that significant, which the company attributed to corporate loans availed by the respective companies and not related to promoter margin loans.
Long term trend
But taking a step back and analysing the trend since March-2020, when the Adani Group stocks took off, investors can see a steep decline in the pledged share percentages (as a percentage of promoter holding).
As share prices have rallied which are the underlying asset for the pledge, the percentage pledged and by implication, the loans availed by the promoter too may have declined over the last three years.
Also, except in the case of Adani Power, there are inflection points at which the share price rally in 2020 and early 2021, coincided with a decline in promoter pledging.
In the case of Adani Enterprises, promoter pledging has reduced from 50 per cent in 2020 to 0.6 per cent now.
In the case of Adani Green, according to filings, promoter pledge has reduced from 4.4 per cent in December 2022 to 3.5 per cent.
However it needs to be noted that it has increased from 0.96 per cent last year same time.
Adani Ports has seen the most signifcant reduction in promoter pledging from 17.3 per cent in December 2022 to 4.7 per cent now. It was as high as 58 per cent in March 2020.
The latest filings have not provided data on promoter pledge status in Adani Power, where the ratio remains high. So investors must look for updates post March quarter.