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S Chand Raises Rs 219 Crore From Anchor Investors

S Chand’s three-day initial public offering opens on April 28.



Students sit studying at the Indian Railways Eastern Railway Intermediate College in Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)
Students sit studying at the Indian Railways Eastern Railway Intermediate College in Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

Publishing house S Chand and Company Ltd., on Tuesday, raised Rs 219 crore from 15 anchor investors ahead of its three-day initial public offering (IPO) that opens on April 28.

The company allotted 32.6 lakh shares at the upper end of the price band of Rs 670 apiece, it said in a regulatory filing on Tuesday, taking the total value of shares offered to Rs 218.50 crore. The price band for the IPO has been fixed at Rs 660-670 per share.

The anchor investors included Nomura Trust and Banking Co., Eastspring Investments India, HSBC Global Investment Fund, Reliance Capital Trustee, Birla Sunlife Trustee, Axis Mutual Fund Trustee, SBI Life Insurance and BNP Paribas Arbitrage, among others.

S Chand is a publisher of educational content mainly distributed as school textbooks and books for professional help and competitive exams. The company gets most of its revenue from the school textbooks category.

Besides, Everstone Capital along with seven existing promoters will offload their stake in the company by selling 20.2 percent of the pre-issue share capital, amounting to Rs 40 crore at the upper end of the price band. The offer also includes a fresh issuance of 48.5 lakh equity shares worth Rs 325 crore.

S Chand will use 78.5 percent of the fresh issue to repay debt, which will bring down the total debt-to-equity ratio to 0.3 times in the financial year 2017-18.

Also Read: S Chand’s IPO Allows Everstone Capital To Make 2.5 Times Its Investment