Patanjali Foods FPO Update Company Will Follow OFS QIP Route To Reduce Promoters Holding

Patanjali Foods, the leading company of FMCG sector, is in discussion for the last few days. The company has not complied with the condition of increasing the public shareholding within the stipulated time, due to which the stock exchanges have taken action against the company. After that there was a discussion that the company can bring FPO (Patanjali Foods FPO). The company is considering other ways to increase public shareholding.

So many shares have been frozen

Patanjali Foods had recently told that stock exchanges have frozen crores of its shares. Stock exchanges have frozen promoters’ shares in Patanjali Foods, which number 292.58 million. These shares are equivalent to 80.82 per cent stake in the company. The frozen shares belong to 21 promoter entities. Patanjali Ayurved is the largest shareholder of Patanjali Foods with 39.4 per cent stake.

sebi shareholding rules

According to the provisions of SEBI, public shareholding in any listed company should be at least 25 per cent. However, as per the data available till 31 December 2022, the holding of public shareholders in Patanjali Foods is 19.18 per cent. Following the NCLT process, Patanjali Group acquired Ruchi Soya, now known as Patanjali Foods. When this deal was done in the year 2019, the promoters’ stake in the company was 98.87 per cent. The company was given 18 months and three years to bring down the public shareholding to 10 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively.

Need to sell so many shares now

Patanjali Foods sold shares worth Rs 4,300 crore through a public offer in March 2022. After that the public shareholding in the company had increased to 19.18 per cent. Now the company needs to sell about 6 per cent stake of the promoters as per SEBI rules. It was being told in the news that the company can bring FPO for this. However, denying the news, Patanjali Foods has said that it is looking at options like offer for sale and qualified institutional placement through stock markets.

The company gave this clarification

Patanjali Foods is one of the largest companies in the segment of edible oils. The company’s competition in this segment is from Adani Wilmar, the FMCG company of Adani Group. After the action of the stock markets, the company issued a statement assuring its investors. The company had said that the recent action of the stock markets would neither affect its financial position nor have any impact on its regular operations.

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