Shares of IRCTC, which made a bumper debut on exchanges on Monday, moved higher today before seeing some profit-taking. IRCTC shares rose as much as 2.7% today to a new high of ₹748.9 on BSE. IRCTC shares had closed 127% higher on Monday as compared to its issue price of ₹320, the biggest stock market debut for any company in nearly two years. The ₹650 crore IPO of IRCTC was subscribed 112 times and was open between 30 September and 4 October.
Besides online ticketing, IRCTC also operates a catering service and sells packaged drinking water and tourism holiday packages. On October 4, IRCTC flagged off its first privately run train Tejas Express on the Lucknow-Delhi route.
Apart from attractive valuation, analysts said that huge demand was in part caused by the small number of shares released by the government. After the market listing, the government’s stake in IRCTC is now down to 87.4%.
IRCTC’s IPO is also the biggest and the most successful among the four companies from the Indian Railways stable that have gone public.
Starting September 1, IRCTC has resumed charging a fee on train tickets booked online, which is expected to add ₹450 crore to revenue annually.
IRCTC’s debut is a bright spot in India’s IPO market that has seen 11 issuers raise around ₹10,000 crore in the first nine months of the year, the fewest issuers since 2014, Bloomberg reported. That compares with about ₹31,000 crore raised via 24 public floats in 2018.
At 10.47 am, ITCTC shares were down 1.3% to ₹718.80 as compared to a 0.50% gain in Sensex. (With Agency Inputs)
