Indiabulls Financial to float IPO soon

Indiabulls Financial Services Limited, a financial services company, will soon come out with an initial public offer of 2,71,87,519 equity shares of Rs 2 each.

Addressing a press conference, Gagan Banga, national sales and marketing head of Indiabulls, said that the company would utilise the issue proceeds to promote new business activities, upgrade its infrastructure and open new branches besides facilitating investments and acquisitions.

He said the company was planning to adopt the book-building process and had not yet fixed any price-band for the public issue.

The issue is being made through a 100 per cent book-building process wherein up to 50 per cent of the issue would be allocated on a discretionary basis to qualified institutional buyers.

Further, not less that 25 per cent of the issue would be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to non-institutional bidders and not less that 25 per cent would be available for allocation on a proportionate basis to retail bidders.

Banga said that the company had filed the draft red herring prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). The initial public offering would open and close in the next 45 days and would be listed on the Bombay and National stock exchanges.

Indiabulls has 72 offices across 55 cities in the country. "The company plans to increase the number to around 100 by the end of the calendar year, and to 140 by the end of the financial year," he said.

The company which has five offices in Andhra Pradesh would open its second office in Hyderabad in the next one month.

"As part of the expansion, we would be looking at second-tier cities and smaller towns for offering the company's services," he said.

The turnover of the company for the financial year ended March 31, 2004 was Rs 102.32 crore. The consolidated revenues for the year was Rs 71.95 crore as compared to Rs 26.67 crore during the financial year 2002-03.

The net profit for the last financial year was Rs 19.35 crore as compared to Rs 5.1 crore in the previous fiscal.