
India's biggest depository, National Securities Depository Limited (NSDL), has changed the scale of its much-awaited initial public offering (IPO), reducing it from 57.26 million shares to 50.15 million shares. This update was revealed in an addendum to its draft prospectus sent to the SEBI market regulator. The whole IPO will be an offer-for-sale (OFS), thus, NSDL itself will not get any proceeds from the offering, and no new shares will be created.
Several significant stakeholders will be selling parts of their holdings under the updated offer:
Offloading over 22 million shares, IDBI Bank will have 11.11% of NSDL's equity left.
Selling 18 million shares, or 9% of its ownership, National Stock Exchange (NSE) will
Together, Union Bank of India, State Bank of India, and HDFC Bank will divest almost 3%.
Two percent further stake will be accounted for by other selling shareholders.
With respective stakes of 26% and 24%, IDBI Bank and NSE are the two biggest owners currently; HDFC Bank owns almost 9%.
As NSDL strives to comply with SEBI's ownership restrictions in market infrastructure institutions, the size of IPO declines. With a compliance date ending in October 2023, SEBI limited single-entity ownership in such institutions in 2018 to 15%. Specifically, NSE was obliged to cut its ownership and received an extension for divestment. Following a request from the depository referencing market conditions, SEBI has extended the overall listing deadline for NSDL to July 31, 2025.
The IPO will not include any fresh issue of shares as an offer-for-sale, thus NSDL will not raise fresh capital for its usage. The main goals are to guarantee regulatory compliance and let current owners maximize a portion of their holdings.
Leading investment banks, including ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, HSBC Securities and Capital Markets (India), IDBI Capital Markets & Securities, Motilal Oswal Investment Advisors, and SBI Capital, are forming a consortium managing the IPO.
In recent years, NSDL has shown strong financial expansion. The depository noted a 13% increase in income and a 33% year-on-year decline in consolidated net profit for the nine months ending December 2024. Reflecting great liquidity and operational effectiveness, its net cash and cash equivalents stood at ₹82.9 crore as of December 31, 2024, up from ₹76 crore a year earlier.
The public release of NSDL comes after the earlier listing of its competitor, Central Depository Services (India) Limited (CDSL), already traded on Indian stock markets. The NSDL listing will give investors still another chance to engage in India's fast-expanding capital markets infrastructure industry. When NSDL's IPO comes on the market before the July 2025 deadline, its strong financials, established market posture, and compliance-driven approach should draw a lot of investor interest.
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