Coal India is Gold India, stay with it: Govt to investors

The government on Sunday advised investors to stay put with Coal India (CIL) to multiply their fortunes and compared the strengths of the company with gold, which is considered the best long-term bet to create wealth.

"Coal India is actually Gold India for the investor community, stay with it," Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal told PTI, after witnessing a 43 per cent rise in shares of the company within 2 days of its debut on the bourses.

The world's largest coal producer, CIL, made a handsome debut on the bourses and ended the week up 43 per cent at Rs 349.65 a share on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) as against the issue price of Rs 245 a share.

"It's a Diwali gift from CIL to the investor community across the globe," Jaiswal said on the rise in CIL's share price in just two trading sessions.

Analysts are upbeat on the future of the company and are upping their closing price estimates for the end of each successive trading session.

It was earlier predicted that the company will touch a peak of Rs 325 a share on debut. Later, analysts said that the company would touch Rs 350 mark during the muhurat trading on Diwali. Coal India, however, made an intra-day high of 357.60 a share on the BSE before the last week's close.

According to the minister, the coal major has strong fundamentals and the investor community is aware of its bullish future. Before making the block buster debut in the stock markets, CIL generated Rs 15,200 crore for the government in the 4-day initial public offer (IPO), concluded last month. The government sold 10 per cent stake in its wholly-owned coal company through the IPO.

"Besides reaping profit by investing in CIL, an investor who participated in the IPO also served the nation, as Rs 15,200 crore proceeds of the public offer would be used in development activities," Jaiswal said.

With a total market capitalisation of Rs 2.20 lakh crore, state-run coal behemoth is presently the country's fourth most valuable firm and is behind Reliance Industries (which tops the list of 10 most valuable firms), ONGC (at the second spot) followed by the State Bank of India.