Hindalco to raise Rs 2,900 crore in QIP

Hindalco Industries, India’s largest aluminium maker, plans to sell shares to institutional investors at Rs 130.90 each to raise Rs 2,900 crore this week. The board of directors met here today to fulfill the formalities before the issue is opened.

Prior to this, the top management was on a two-week road show to meet institutional investors in the US, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore to gauge investors’ appetite. The management team, including managing director Debu Bhattacharya and chief financial officer Sunirmal Talukdar, returned from the road show on Friday.

“The issue will be opened this week, depending on the market condition,” said a banker involved with the transaction.

The company has Rs 23,000 crore capital expenditure plan for the next three years. About a third of this, around Rs 7,500 crore, is to be funded by equity infusion and internal accrual.

The capital expenditure involves ongoing projects such as production of alumina from the Utkal Alumina refinery, scheduled to start around July 2011. The construction of a 1.5 million tonne per annum project at Rayagada, Orissa, is also in full swing. The Mahan Aluminium project in Madhya Pradesh, with capacity production of 359,000 tonnes per annum, is also expected to start production by July 2011. Besides, a captive power plant of 900 Mw is also coming up at Bargwan in Chhattisgarh.

According to a sale document filed with National Stock Exchange, Citigroup Global Markets, Deutsche Equities, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, HSBC, RBS Equities, SBI Capital Markets and UBS Securities are managing the issue.