Sebi approves 5 IPOs in February

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

Five companies—Uniparts India Ltd, VRL Logistics Ltd, PNC Infratech Ltd, ACB (India) Ltd and Shree Pushkar Chemicals and Fertilizers Ltd—have obtained the green signal from the Sebi to float their respective IPOs in February.

The Sebi did not given its nod to any company to float IPO last month. 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 Sebi between September and December.

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 said 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 ₹ 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, which also happens to be the biggest public offer with an issue size of ₹ 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 ₹ 267 crore.