Indian student housing firm Elevate Campuses made a muted stock market debut on Wednesday, as investors weighed the company’s growth prospects against elevated debt and revenue concentration.
The stock was trading at 362.50 rupees at 10:15 a.m. IST after listing at 355.10 rupees on the National Stock Exchange of India, a 1.9% discount to its issue price of 362 rupees per share.
The listing values the company at 59.95 billion rupees ($624.74 million), below its IPO valuation of around 61 billion rupees.
Elevate Campuses‘ asset-light expansion and diversified platform provide growth opportunities, but elevated leverage, dependence on key institutions, occupancy risks, and significant acquisition outlay remain concerns, SMC Global Securities SMCG.NS said in a note last week.
The IPO was subscribed 1.79 times, led by qualified institutional buyers who bid for 2.52 times the shares reserved for them. In contrast, non-institutional investors subscribed 0.84 times their share and retail investors bid for 1.01 times their allotted portion.
The share sale was entirely a fresh issue aggregating up to 21 billion rupees, with proceeds intended to fund the acquisition of 16 school infrastructures across Dubai, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Pune.
The company raised 9.45 billion rupees from anchor investors ahead of the public issue, including Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global, Tata AIG, SBI Mutual Fund, and HDFC Mutual Fund.
($1 = 95.9600 Indian rupees)
Reuters
