Government To Sell Up To 8% Stake In Ircon International For Rs 1,158 Crore

The government will divest up to an 8% stake in Ircon International Ltd. for Rs 1,158 crore.

It will sell 3.76 crore shares, which is 4%, and will additionally divest another 4% through the greenshoe option at a floor price of Rs 154 per share, the company said in an exchange filing.

The offer for sale opens on Dec. 7 for non-retail investors and retail investors can participate on Dec. 8.

The floor price is set at a discount of 10% on Wednesday's closing price of Rs 171.95 apiece on the NSE.

The government currently holds an 89.18% stake in the railway engineering company. After the offer for sale, the government's stake in the company will reduce to 67.3%.

"Offer for sale in Ircon opens tomorrow for non-retail investors. Retail investors can bid on Friday. Government would divest 8% equity including green shoe option," the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management posted on social media platform X, formerly Twitter.

About 10% of the offer shares will be reserved for allocation to retail investors, and a minimum of 25% of the offer will be reserved for mutual funds and insurance companies, subject to receipt of valid bids at or above the floor price.

The offer shall be undertaken exclusively through the seller's brokers, it said.

The railway engineering firm got listed on the bourses in September 2018, and its initial public offering had raised Rs 467 crore.

So far this fiscal, Rs 6,138 crore has been raised from selling minority stake in CPSEs, as the Covid-19 pandemic delayed big-ticket disinvestments like Bharat Petroleum Corp., according to a PTI report.

Shares of Ircon International closed 0.95% down at Rs 171.95 apiece on the NSE as compared with a 0.4% advance in the benchmark Nifty 50.