Mumbai: The year 2021 has been highly productive for the primary market with 63 initial public offerings that also broke the record for India's largest IPO, with Paytm's parent company One 97 Communications raising Rs 18,500 crore.
In comparison, the years 2020, 2019 and 2018 saw just 18,16 and 25 IPOs, respectively.
After the second Covid wave, the primary market was flooded with IPOs from the middle of June and more than 40 companies tapped the market in the second half, aided by a stable and buoyant secondary market and faster approval by regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India.
Technology-enabled companies Zomato (Rs 9,375 crore), Nykaa (Rs 5,351.91 crore), Paytm (Rs 18,500 crore), Policy Bazaar (Rs 5,625 crore) hit the market in the second half of 2021, raising larger amounts than other IPOs.
Fifty-five IPOs have listed so far and six more are ready to list (Shriram Properties, C. E. Infosystems, Metro Brands, Medplus Health Services, Data Patterns India and HP Adhesives) and two more are currently active--Supriya Life Sciences and CMS Infosystems scheduled to open on December 21. Now the stage is set for the biggest IPO being planned by the government of Life Insurance Corporation of India in the first quarter of 2022.
IPO investors have been amply rewarded with gains, with many issues trading at huge premium. Only 14 of the 55 companies listed so far are trading below the public issue price.
Globally too, for the primary market, 2021 was a year of record number of IPOs.
"After last year's intense uncertainty, 2021 saw a record number of companies go public. According to PitchBook, a Morningstar company, nearly 1,500 companies went public worldwide this year as of December 14, raising almost $500 billion, almost double the amount raised in 2020," according to a report by Morningstar.
Highly successful domestic IPOs in 2021 include MTAR Techno-logies (public issue price Rs 575/ current market price Rs 2,210), Macrotech Developers (Rs 486/Rs 1,484.95), Nureca (Rs 400/Rs 1,475), Sona BLW Precision Forgings( Rs 291/Rs 773.05), Zomato( Rs 76/Rs 139.65), Paras Defence & Space Technologies (Rs175/Rs693), Clean Science Techno-logy (Rs900/Rs 2,411), FSN Ecommerce Ventures (Rs 1,125/Rs 2,089), and Tatva Chintan Pharma (Rs 1,083/Rs 2,407.35).
But the IPO by Paytm has been a disappointment with the shares trading at Rs 1331.90, down over 38 per cent compared to the public issue price of Rs 2150 per share.
Some of the smaller IPOs by amount of money raised saw a high degree of retail and high net worth investors' participation and were subscribed several times the shares on offer---Latent View Analytics (326.49 times), Paras Defence (304.26 times), Tega Industries (219.04 times), MTAR Technologies (200.79 times and Tatva Chintan Pharma ((180.36 times).
