LIC IPO subscribed 67% on first day of bidding

New Delhi: The Rs 20,557 crore initial public offering (IPO) of Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) saw a decent response from investors during the first hour of bidding process today. The largest ever IPO in the Indian primary market is open for subscription till Monday. Retail investors can bid for the issue even on Saturday, an unusual move aimed at attracting investors.

According to BSE data, at 7 pm investors made bids for 10,86,91,770 equity shares or 67 per cent compared to the 16,20,78,067 equity shares offered for subscription.

Among the five categories, employees and policyholders quota was fully subscribed. Retail quota saw 60 per cent subscription while non-institutional investor quota was subscribed 27 per cent. QIB quota saw 33 per cent bids so far.


The issue is entirely an offer for sale of about 22.13 crore equity shares by the government of India, which owns 100 per cent stake in the insurer, but will offload only 3.5 per cent stake of the company.

The company will sell its shares in the range of Rs 902-949 apiece but has given a discount of Rs 60 per share to its policyholders, who will bid for the issue. Eligible employees and retail bidders will get a discount of Rs 45 per share.




The company has reserved 50 per cent of the net issue for qualified institutional bidders (QIB), where non-institutional bidders (NIIs) will get 15 per cent of the issue. Remaining 35 per cent portion has been allocated to retail bidders.

Life Insurance Corporation of India is valued at Rs 6 lakh crore, which is about 1.12 times its embedded value (EV) of Rs 5.4 lakh crore. It is quite reasonable to its listed peers, brokerages said.

The AUM of LIC jumped about 10 per cent to Rs 37,46,404.47 at the end of financial year 2021 from Rs 34,14,174.57 crore in the previous year. The net profit of the company jumped to Rs 2,974.14 crore from Rs 2,710.48 crore.

For the period ended December 31, 2021, LIC had a total AUM of Rs 40,90,786.78 crore and reported a net profit of Rs 1,715.31 crore.

Majority of the brokerages are bullish on the IPO and have suggested subscribing to it. However, some have raised concerns over its declining market share, overhang of future stake sales by the government.