Shares of SBI Life Insurance Company Limited which had tapped the capital markets with its offer for sale of 12 cr shares in a price band of Rs 685-700 debuted at the bourses and had a decent start.
Unfortunately, the share came under pressure in the last hour or so and could manage gains of just over1%, closing at Rs 708 on the BSE and Rs 707.55 on the NSE.
Earlier the company had allotted 3.18 cr shares to 69 anchor investors comprising of 104 entities. The issue received a mixed response with QIB portion subscribed 12.56 times. The other three buckets which comprised of HNI, retail and shareholder reservation remained undersubscribed at 0.70 times, 0.85 times and 0.38 times respectively. It indeed was a poor response from half the issue clearly demonstrating that people found the issue expensive.

The price discovered was Rs 733.30 on the BSE where 3.31 lac shares were traded while it was Rs 735 on the NSE where 58.67 lac shares were traded in the preopen session. The share made a high of Rs 738 on the BSE and Rs 740 on the NSE respectively. The lows were Rs 702.25 and Rs 701.70. The total traded volume was 403.31 lac shares which was 33.61% of the IPO size and 45.73% of the non-anchor portion. The delivery volume was 221.59 lakh shares which was 54.94% of the traded volume and 18.47% of the IPO size. Considering that anchor investors cannot sell for 30 days this delivery percentage increases to 25.12% on the non-anchor size. The weighted average of the day’s trade was Rs 725.76 on BSE and Rs 725.24 indicating that the bulk of the trade has happened at higher levels. The price fall was in the last hour as mentioned earlier indicating selling pressure.

The share listed well but could not sustain. Its high time that some amount of greed is sacrificed for leaving money on the table for risk takers. Not every issue sees subscription of 200 times overall and 650 times by HNI’s.