Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical firm Laurus Labs on Monday made a strong debut with its shares listing at a premium of more than 14 percent to Rs 490 over its issue price of Rs 428 on the National Stock Exchange (NSE).
The stock touched an intraday high of Rs 498 per share, up 16.35 percent over the issue price in early morning trade.
The healthcare company's Rs1,332 crore Initial Public Offering (IPO) had seen a sound response from both institutional and retail investors. The public offer, which opened for subscription on December 6-8, was oversubscribed by 4.54 times.
While the portion set aside for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) were oversubscribed 10.54 times, the quota for high networth individuals (HNIs) was oversubscribed by 3.58 times. The retail investors' participation was also encouraging with the portion witnessing bids worth 1.61 times.
According to the company, it would utilise the net proceeds from the IPO for pre-payment of loans, apart from using them for general corporate purposes.
Laurus Labs manufactures active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) for antiretrovirals and Hepatitis C. It had posted a total revenue of Rs 1,791.4 crore during the last financial year, up 31.65 percent over the same period of previous fiscal. Its net profit stood at Rs 132.7 crore in 2015-16, 94 percent rise over the same period a year ago. The company's operating margin had also improved to 21.2 percent in FY16 against 17.2 percent reported in the previous fiscal.
The pharma firm has three manufacturing units in Visakhapatnam and two of them were approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).
