Shares of Dr Pathlabs Limited listed at the BSE and NSE and made a stunning debut to be easily the best listing for the year 2015. The company had through a secondary offering sold 1.16 cr shares in a price band of Rs 540-550 with a discount of Rs 15 to retail investors. The company had allotted 34.80 lac shares to 15 anchor investors comprising of 25 entities at the top end of the band at Rs 550. The issue received excellent response and was subscribed 33.41 times with HNI’s subscribing their bucket 61.28 times.
The discovered price was Rs 717 on the BSE and Rs 720 on the NSE. The lows of the day were quite close to this discovered price at Rs 715.50 and Rs 711.15 respectively. The highs of the day were Rs 842.40 and 843.70. The weighted average was Rs 777.15 and Rs 778.44 significantly lower than the closing price of Rs 824.15 and Rs 834.50. This indicates that the price rise was in the latter half of the day. Apparently looking at the huge trading volumes of 271.87 lac shares or 2.34 times of the IPO size, one gets a feeling that somewhere people/traders went short during the day and this led to short covering and significant increase in traded volume.
Delivery volume at 55.50 lac shares was 20.41% of traded volume and a significant 47.84% of the IPO size. If one were to deduct the anchor portion from the same which has a lock in period of 30 days, the delivery percentage rises significantly to 68.35%. Just one name appears in the bulk trades list with Ashoka PTE buying 4.25 lac shares at 729.86 per share. Very clearly the share has gone into stronger hands and there seems to be some sort of liquidity squeeze on the counter. It’s good for some more price movement but valuations are certainly stretched at these levels.
| Exchange | Open | High | Low | Close | Net Change | % Gain/loss | Wt. Avg | Volume | Delivery | Del %age |
| BSE | 717.00 | 842.40 | 715.50 | 824.15 | 274.15 | 49.85 | 777.15 | 4969365 | 932390 | 18.76 |
| NSE | 720.00 | 843.70 | 711.15 | 834.50 | 284.50 | 51.73 | 778.44 | 22217904 | 4617581 | 20.78 |
| Total | 27187269 | 5549971 | 20.41 |
All in all it’s been a super duper listing and with 50% gains on listing day no one can complain. It is a Christmas gift to investors who were lucky and they have made decent gains. Lucky investors from the retail category were allotted 20s shares at a discount of Rs 15 which means they paid Rs 10,700 for 20 shares and were able to sell them at the average price of Rs 777, a profit of Rs 242 or 45%. It sure is a great start.
With clearly the best left for the year end, hopes of money being left on the table will rise with coming issues in the new calendar year. Whether the promoter-merchant banker duo delivers or not will be seen in the next few issues.
Great start for Dr Lal Pathlabs.
