HUL surges 4% after Societe Generale buys 12.9 million shares via bulk deal

Hindustan Unilever (HUL) shares rose 4 per cent to Rs 2,075 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday after institutional investors bought stake in the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) company via open market on Thursday. The stock recovered 9 per cent from its Thursday’s low of Rs 1,902 touched in early morning deal.

The NSE bulk deal data on the exchange showed foreign portfolio investor Societe Generale, a French multinational investment bank and financial services company, bought 12.9 million shares of HUL at an average price of Rs 1,902. The rest of the buyers are unknown yet.

At 09:51 AM, HUL stock was trading over 3 per cent higher at Rs 2,053. In comparison, the benchmark Nifty was trading 123.50 points or 1.34 per cent higher at 9,322.55 levels.

On Thursday, UK-based Glaxo-SmithKline (GSK) offloaded its stake in HUL via block deals. According to the term sheet, an over 133 million shares — 5.7 per cent of the total equity shares — were offered in the range of Rs 1,850-1,950 to investors through a special block window. The deal will be valued roughly between Rs 24,600 crore to Rs 25,900 crore.

As per the scheme of amalgamation among GSK Consumer Healthcare and HUL, GlaxoSmithKline Pte and Horlicks had received 54.08 million shares of HUL (representing 2.3 per cent of total paid-up equity) and 79.69 million shares (3.39 per cent stake), respectively in April. The merger of GSK Consumer with HUL had taken place on the basis of an exchange ratio of 4.39 HUL shares for each GSK Consumer share.

Accordingly, parent company Unilever Plc and group companies' stake in HUL reduced to 61.90 per cent, from 67.19 per cent earlier after the issue of new shares. READ MORE
 

For the quarter ended March 2020, HUL last week reported a 7 per cent decline in volumes, faring even worse than the demonetisation quarter (October-December 2016), when the fall was 4 per cent. Sanjiv Mehta, chairman and managing director, HUL, said production had come to a near standstill in the first phase of the lockdown and the supply chain disruption was acute, contributing to the decline.

Profit before tax fell 10.6 per cent to Rs 1,992 crore for the period, while net profit declined 1.2 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 1,519 crore in Q4, as against a consensus estimate of Rs 1,821 crore.

The company’s revenue was down 9.4 per cent to Rs 9,011 crore, as against the Rs 10,103-crore consensus estimate of analysts polled by Bloomberg. READ MORE