Sebi approves five IPOs in February

New Delhi: As many as five companies have received market regulator Sebi' approval this month to launch  their initial public offerings (IPOs) to fund business expansion and meet working capital requirements.   

Five companies - Uniparts India, VRL Logistics, PNC Infratech, ACB (India) Ltd and Shree Pushkar Chemicals and Fertilizers have obtained green signal from the Sebi to float their respective IPOs in February. The Sebi has not given nod to any company to float IPO last month. However, these five companies are yet to launch their public offers. Most of the companies plan to utilise IPO proceeds for capacity expansion as well as working capital requirements.   

All these firms had filed their draft papers with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) between September-December 2014. According to market experts, the IPO market is expected to see some activity in 2015 as a dozen companies have filed draft papers with the Sebi for public offerings since the new government took charge at the Centre in May.

"In 2015, we will see spurt in IPO activities as more than a dozen companies have filed their draft documents in 2014 ," Geojit BNP Paribas Research Head Alex Mathew said. He further said that many companies, which scrapped their IPO plans earlier due to bad market conditions, are putting in    fresh efforts to enter the capital markets.

However, fund raising through IPOs was just Rs 1,528 crore in 2014 despite a buoyant secondary market. Besides, only six main-board IPOs came to the market. The entire year saw just one follow-on offering. This was by state-run Engineers India Ltd (EIL), which also happens to be the biggest public offer with an issue size of Rs 495 crore.

The year, however, witnessed a flurry of activity on the small and medium enterprise (SME) platform. There were as many as 40 SME IPOs, which collected a total of Rs 267 crore.