NEW DELHI: Subscriptions for India's biggest stock listing ever surged further on the final day of bidding on Friday, as investors bet on Jio Platforms' $3.2 billion offering to tap into the nation's telecom and digital sector.
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's first initial public offering in two decades is being closely watched as a test of investor appetite for large listings when AI-linked stocks are facing increased scrutiny. Jio, whose mobile network serves more than 500 million users, is launching its initial public offering during the auspicious Hindu festive season.
The Jio IPO has received more than 12 million applications, the most ever in India, said a Reliance official familiar with the matter. In contrast, Chinese memory chip giant CXMT's $8.6 billion IPO, the biggest in Asia this year, attracted investments from around 9.4 million accounts.
Public subscriptions for Jio's IPO have exceeded 13 times the shares on offer, driven by strong demand from institutional and retail investors, employees and shareholders. If bids were largely placed near the Rs 1,119-rupee top of the IPO's price band, demand exceeds $30.5 billion.
That is on top of so-called anchor investors like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, BlackRock and Fidelity that bid for their quotas on Monday. Their reserved $854 million worth of shares received bids of over $25 billion.
"This is a Reliance IPO after a long time, which is triggering a lot of exuberance and euphoria for the stock," said Kranthi Bathini, equity strategist at WealthMills Securities.
The IPO values Jio Platforms at up to $108.3 billion, potentially making it one of India's biggest companies by market capitalisation when trading starts on Wednesday.
Jio, led by Ambani's eldest son, Akash Ambani, counts Meta Platforms and Alphabet's Google among its old investors.
The IPO got off to an unusually rapid start on Wednesday, when the offering was fully subscribed within two hours of opening.
That contrasts with most Indian IPOs, where books typically build gradually and institutional investors often wait until the final hours to place bids.
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