Hindustan Copper FPO this month

State-owned Hindustan Copper's follow-on public offer will take place this month and not in December, as earlier planned, Mines Minister B K Handique said today.

"(Hindustan Copper) FPO will be very soon. It will be in this month," Handique said.

While the government has not officially announced a date for the FPO, Hindustan Copper CMD Shakeel Ahmed had earlier told the media it would take place in December.

Asked what kind of response the ministry was expecting from Hindustan Copper's FPO, considering the mega success of Coal India's recent IPO, he said: "As compared to Coal India, it will have a limited response. Coal is known to everybody."

He, however, did not provide any figure as to how much the government was looking at to raise from the FPO, although in the past he had said the share sale could generate around Rs 4,000 crore.

The Cabinet had cleared the disinvestment plans of HCL in June and the FPO was tipped to kick off from December 6.

Hindustan Copper Ltd (HCL) filed a draft prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India in September for its proposed 20 per cent share sale programme.

The government will sell 10 per cent of its stake in Hindustan Copper under the FPO, while the company will issue fresh equity in the same proportion.

Shares accruing to a 0.41 per cent stake in the company are already being publicly traded. The proposed FPO will see the government's equity holding coming down to 81.45 per cent from 99.59 per cent at present.

In July, the copper producer appointed UBS Securities, ICICI Securities, SBI Capital, Kotak Mahindra and Enam Securities as the managers of the issue.

The company has plans to increase its production capacity from 3.2 million tonnes of copper per annum at present to 12 million tonnes per annum within the next five-six years, which will entail a capital investment of Rs 4,580 crore.

The company is also eyeing copper assets in countries like Chile, Namibia and Afghanistan and has forged an alliance with another mining PSU, Nalco, for overseas mining projects.

The government aims to raise Rs 40,000 crore through divestment in state-run PSUs this fiscal.

The recently-concluded Coal India public offer, which was a great success, was subscribed 15.28 times and generated bids worth 2.3 lakh crore. CIL generated Rs 15,200 crore for the government through the four-day IPO, which saw the government selling a 10 per cent stake in the coal miner.

It had raised Rs 25,000 crore through disinvestment in Oil India, NMDC, REC and NTPC last fiscal.