Retail investors fill their Jio IPO quota inside two hours on day two

Retail investors, slow to commit on the opening day of the Jio Platforms share sale, filled their entire portion within two hours of bidding resuming on Thursday.

By 11 am the ₹30,213 crore issue had drawn bids for 3.47 times the shares on offer, according to BSE data. Qualified institutional buyers had bid for 9.42 times their quota, non-institutional investors 2.34 times, the portion reserved for Reliance Industries shareholders 2.06 times and employees 1.61 times.

Demand kept building through the day. By 2:12 pm the issue had been subscribed 4.3 times, with institutions at 9.78 times, non-institutional investors at 4.09 times and retail investors at 1.39 times.

The pick-up among individual bidders matters because the retail quota had been covered only about two-thirds by the close on Wednesday, even as institutions piled in. The issue had sold out within 100 minutes of opening, the fastest for any Indian offer, and by 5 pm on day one had attracted bids worth about ₹69,800 crore for 62.36 crore shares.

The Reliance unit is selling up to 27 crore new shares at ₹1,065 to ₹1,119 each, with no sale by existing shareholders. At the top of the band it is valued at about $108 billion, and the offer is the largest attempted in India. Before the issue opened, Jio raised about ₹8,110 crore from 212 anchor investors, among them BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, at ₹1,119 a share.

Moody’s Ratings has called the issue credit positive for Reliance Industries, because the proceeds will be used to cut debt and interest costs at Reliance Jio Infocomm.

Bidding closes on Friday, 23 October.