LIC IPO: Overwhelming Demand On Day 1, With Over 60% Bids And Counting

The Life Insurance Corporation's (LIC) mega public issue opened today to an overwhelming response, with over 60 per cent bids, led by policyholders and employees.

The subscriptions are set to close on May 9, including an additional day on Saturday, with the allotment announcement likely on May 12 and the listing on stock exchanges on May 17.

While the government had delayed the Initial Public Offering (IPO) from March and reduced the size of its stake sale to 3.5 per cent through an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to 22.13 crore equity shares, from 5 per cent earlier, the trend so far shows solid demand from anchor investors at the top end of the price band.

Indeed, the IPO had been subscribed by 62 per cent of the offer within seven hours on the first day of bidding and counting. Off the 16.20 crore shares on offer, 10.05 crore equity shares were snapped on day 1.

Retail individual investors' portion was booked 0.55 times and the non-institutional investors' category was subscribed 0.33 times. Employee reserved and policyholder quota portions were fully subscribed, 1.02 times and 1.82 times, respectively.

The insurance behemoth's IPO can be bid at the price band of Rs 902-949 per share, with the bidding lot starting at 15 and a maximum of 240 shares.

Even after the reduced size of about Rs 20,557 crore, LIC IPO will be the biggest public offering ever in the country.

So far, the amount mobilised from the IPO of Paytm in 2021 was the largest ever at Rs 18,300 crore, followed by Coal India (2010) at nearly Rs 15,500 crore and Reliance Power (2008) at Rs 11,700 crore.

For more details on the LIC IPO: click here for the top points.