New Delhi, Dec. 15 -- Corona Remedies Ltd made a spectacular stock market debut on Monday with shares of the drugmaker that counts private equity firm ChrysCapital as an investor listing at a premium of nearly 37% to its issue price.
Shares of Corona began trading at Rs 1,452 apiece on the BSE, compared with the initial public offering price of Rs 1,062. The shares touched a high of Rs 1,499 apiece before ending the day 35.33% higher at Rs 1,437.20 apiece, giving the company a market capitalization of Rs 8,790 crore ($968.5 million), stock exchange data showed.
The strong debut comes after Corona's IPO was subscribed 137 times with institutional investors bidding for more than 278 times the shares reserved for them and non-institutional investors, particularly high-net-worth individuals, bidding for 209 times the shares set aside for them.
The IPO size was Rs 655.37 crore. ChrysCapital sold shares worth Rs 428 crore while Corona's promoters offloaded shares worth Rs 227 crore. The drugmaker didn't issue any fresh shares in the IPO.
ChrysCapital, which last month set a domestic record by marking the final close of its tenth fund at $2.2 billion, had poured in around Rs 687 crore in Corona Remedies in 2021. It had bought the stake from Malaysian PE firm Creador and the promoters in 2021, valuing the pharmaceutical company at around Rs 2,500-2,600 crore.
The partial exit helped the PE firm to likely meet the benchmark returns, VCCircle reported earlier. The strong debut will make the returns even better if the stock holds on to these gains.
Corona Remedies is an India-focused branded pharmaceutical formulation company engaged in developing, manufacturing and marketing products in women's healthcare, cardio-diabeto, pain management, urology and other therapeutic areas. It has more than doubled its revenue and net profit in the last four years.
For the financial year ended March 2025, the company's revenue from operations jumped nearly 18% to Rs 1,196 crore from Rs 1,014 crore in the preceding year, as per its IPO documents. Its net profit rose more than 65% to Rs 149 crore in FY25, from Rs 90.5 crore the year before. In the first three months of the current fiscal year, it reported revenue of Rs 346.5 crore and a profit of Rs 46.2 crore.
Meanwhile, this was the first liquidity move by ChrysCapital since it hit the final close of its tenth fund in November, securing commitments of $2.2 billion and setting the record for the largest sector-agnostic PE fund ever raised by a firm in India. The new fund is 60% larger than its $1.35-billion ninth fund three years ago.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.