New Delhi, Oct. 16 -- Rubicon Research Ltd made a spectacular stock market debut on Thursday with its shares listing at a premium of almost 28% to the initial public offering price as investors continued to flock towards the company.
Shares of Rubicon, which counts private equity firm General Atlantic as its main investor, started trading on the BSE at Rs 620.10 apiece, up from the IPO price of Rs 485. The shares touched a high of Rs 636.15 in morning trade, stock exchange data show.
The strong debut comes after the pharmaceutical products developer's IPO was covered almost 104 times, thanks to heavy demand from institutional, non-institutional and retail investors. Institutional investors bid for 130 times the shares reserved for them. The quota for non-institutional investors was covered 97 times while retail investors' portion was subscribed over 35 times.
The company kicked off its IPO process last year and received approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India in November 2024. Initially, the IPO plan consisted of a fresh issue of Rs 500 crore and an offer for sale of Rs 585 crore by General Atlantic.
However, ahead of launching the IPO this month, the PE firm increased the size of the offer for sale to Rs 877.5 crore. Rubicon kept the fresh issue unchanged.
Rubicon had fixed the price band of the IPO at Rs 461-485 per share and allotted shares at the upper end. The total IPO size was Rs 1,377.5 crore and valued the company around Rs 7,990 crore. It currently commands a market capitalization of more than Rs 10,000 crore thanks to the listing gains.
New York-headquartered General Atlantic had acquired a majority stake in Rubicon in 2019 for Rs 875 crore (about $123.7 million then) through a combination of primary and secondary transactions which led to the exit of Indian PE firm Everstone Capital.
General Atlantic, which makes both late-stage venture capital and growth equity investments in India, made three partial exits from Rubicon before the IPO and sold more shares than previously planned in the IPO. It currently owns more than a third of the company.
Rubicon makes value-added products for the pharmaceutical industry and develops a portfolio of generic prescription and over-the-counter products across various therapeutic categories with a focus on the US markets.
The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO towards prepayment or scheduled repayment of borrowings, fund inorganic growth and other strategic initiatives, and general corporate purposes.In January, Rubicon agreed to buy a manufacturing plant in Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh, from Alkem Laboratories Ltd, for Rs 149 crore.
Its consolidated revenue for FY25 rose 50% over the previous year to Rs 1,284 crore. It reported a profit of Rs 134.3 crore in FY25 from Rs 91 crore in FY24 and a net loss of Rs 16.8 crore in FY23.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.