GMM Pfaudler falls over 18% on report of promoter selling bulk stake

Shares of GMM Pfaudler fell as much as 18.1%, their worst intraday percentage fall in nearly five years, after a report said that one of its promoters will sell the bulk of its stake

Shares of GMM Pfaudler fell as much as 18.1% on Friday, their worst intraday percentage fall in nearly five years, after a report said that one of its promoters will sell the bulk of its stake in India's largest glass-lined equipment maker.

Pfaudler Inc, which holds a 31.9% stake in GMM Pfaudler, will sell about 29.88% of its holding via block deals at a floor price of 1,700 rupees, Mint newspaper reported.

The floor price is at a discount of 11.7% to the stock's close of 1,924.70 rupees on Thursday,

Multiple block deals were reported in the range of 1,621 rupees to 1,744 rupees, Refinitiv Eikon data showed.

In a September 2020 analyst call, Tarak Patel, GMM Pfaudler's managing director, had said that promoters were "locked in for the next three years" and that there would be "no further dilution of shares, there will be no liquidity event."

GMM Pfaudler did not respond to Reuters' queries on the promoter's stake sale.

Just a month before the analyst call, in August 2020, GMM Pfaudler announced the acquisition of a majority stake, both directly and through a subsidiary, in the global business of the Pfaudler Group.

About 11.7 million shares changed hands as of 1:56 p.m. IST, against the 30-day average of 123,243 shares. The scrip was last down 15.4%.

(Reporting by Nallur Sethuraman in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman)