Luxury watch player Ethos gets Rs 142 cr from anchor investors ahead of IPO

Luxury and premium watch retail player Ethos on Tuesday said it has raised around Rs 142 crore from anchor investors ahead of its initial share sale, which opens for subscription on Wednesday.

The company has decided to allocate 16,13,725 equity shares to anchor investors at Rs 878 apiece, aggregating the transaction size to Rs 141.68 crore, according to a circular uploaded on BSE website.

ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund, Jupiter India Fund, Saint Capital Fund, Nomura Singapore and UPS Group Trust are among the anchor investors.

The Initial Public Offering (IPO) consists of a fresh issue of equity shares aggregating to Rs 375 crore and an Offer-For-Sale (OFS) of up to 1,108,037 equity shares.

As a part of the OFS, Yashovardhan Saboo, KDDL, Mahen Distribution, Saboo Ventures LLP, Anuradha Saboo, Jai Vardhan Saboo, VBL Innovations, Anil Khanna, Nagarajan Subramanian, C Raja Sekhar, Karan Singh Bhandari, Harsh Vardhan Bhuwalka, Anand Vardhan Bhuwalka, Shalini Bhuwalka and Manju Bhuwalka will sell equity shares.

The public issue, with a price band of Rs 836-878 a share, will be open for subscription during May 18-20. At the upper end of the price band, the public issue is expected to garner Rs 472.3 crore.

Proceeds from the fresh issuance will be utilised for repayment of debt, funding working capital requirements, opening new stores and general corporate purposes.

Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional investors, 35 per cent for retail investors and the remaining 15 per cent for non-institutional investors.

Investors can bid for a minimum of 17 equity shares and in multiples of 17 thereafter.

The company's revenue from operations stood at Rs 386.57 crore for fiscal 2021, while its net profit was Rs 5.78 crore in the same period.

Ethos has the largest portfolio of premium and luxury watches in India and retails 50 premium and luxury watch brands like Omega, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger LeCoultre, Panerai, Bvlgari, H. Moser & Cie, Rado, Longines, Baume & Mercier, Oris SA, Corum, Carl F Bucherer, Tissot, Raymond Weil, Louis Moinet and Balmain.

Under the brand name Ethos, it opened its first luxury retail watch store in January 2003 in Chandigarh.

Emkay Global Financial Services and InCred Capital Wealth Portfolio Managers are the book running lead managers to the issue. The equity shares of the company will be listed on BSE and NSE.