NHPC Powering Ahead With IPO

Under the leadership of SK Garg, NHPC is placed to give tough competition to its PSU peer NTPC. About a decade ago there were talks doing the rounds that NTPC will take over NHPC but now the times have changed not only in terms of power generation but also in terms of fetching almost same amount of money from public to fund its expansion plans. NHPC will dilute 24 per cent stake in the IPO, which will be launched between January-March next year.

"We have a mandate for selling 24 per cent, but in the last quarter of this fiscal we hope to launch an initial public offer for 10 per cent and an additional five per cent disinvestments of government stake in the firm," said SK Garg, CMD, NHPC.Right now the company is fully owned by the government and with the paid up capital of Rs10,600 crore of NHPC and going by the face value, the IPO of 15 per cent would raise a minimum of Rs 1,700 crore and the fundamentals of NHPC may attract a huge premium for its IPO.

Present capacity of NHPC is 4,300 MW and it plans to add another 5,200 MW in Eleventh Plan. It has also lined up 14 projects to augment its generation capacity and that is not all. NHPC has well laid plan for funding its capex. It has outlined a capital expenditure of about Rs 30,000 crore and government's budgetary support would be to the tune of Rs 6,000 crore. It already has two lines of credit worth Rs 9,000 crore with LIC.