By Nandan Mandayam
(Reuters) -NTPC Green Energy set a price band on Wednesday for its initial public offering (IPO), targeting a valuation of as much as $10.8 billion in what is set to be India’s third-largest IPO this year, though analysts raised concerns on the “aggressive” pricing.
The company set a price band of 102-108 rupees per share, aiming to raise 100 billion rupees ($1.19 billion) in the IPO, which trails only Hyundai Motor India and Swiggy in size this year.
At the upper end of the range, NTPC Green, a unit of state-owned power company NTPC, will be valued at 910 billion rupees ($10.78 billion), per Reuters calculations.
The IPO comes as India bets big on renewable power and is ramping up capacity. However, its red-hot IPO market has cooled in the past month due to underwhelming corporate earnings and an exodus of foreign funds.
NTPC Green, which mostly produces solar power and has a few wind energy projects, follows solar panel makers Waaree Energies, Premier Energies and ACME Solar to the stock market this year.
Some analysts flagged concerns over NTPC Green’s valuation, including on a price-to-earnings (PE) basis.
“The issue appears to be steeply priced for a company that trails its peers on various valuation metrics,” said Arun Kejriwal, founder of brokerage Kejriwal Research.
NTPC Green’s PE ratio of 148, based on last fiscal year’s earnings, is higher than its smaller peers but lags bigger rival Adani Green Energy (260).
Kranthi Bathini, director of equity strategy at Wealthmills Securities, said the valuation was “aggressive” but the profit growth was attractive.
NTPC Green’s profit nearly doubled to 3.45 billion rupees last financial year, per its draft filing.
It will sell all the shares in the IPO — which will be open for bids from Nov. 19-22 — and plans to use the proceeds to repay its unit NTPC Renewable Energy’s debt.
($1 = 84.4050 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Nandan Mandayam and Manvi Pant in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza)
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