Upper Tamakoshi IPO oversubscribed four times

The primary shares of Upper Tamakoshi Hydropower Ltd (UTHL) have been oversubscribed by nearly four times.
Some 15.89 million units of primary shares worth Rs 1.59 billion of Upper Tamakosi Hydropower drew subscriptions worth over Rs 6.32 billion by the closing today, confirmed deputy manager of Citizens Investment Trust (CIT) Roshan Jung Karki. CIT is the lead issue manager of the hydropower's initial public offering (IPO) that has a face value of Rs 100 per share.
The national pride project is being developed by a subsidiary of the state power utility Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA). The hydropower company opened its IPO of 15.8 million shares on Thursday and by Monday when it closed, 346,166 persons had applied for 67 million shares worth Rs 6.7 billion. The share allotment process will take at least two weeks.
An investor will get at least 40 units of shares of the 456-megawatt (MW) peaking run-of-the-river hydropower company that is being constructed by mobilising domestic resources.
Apart from the current 15 per cent offering to the general public, the hydropower has already issued 105.9 million units of shares for the locals of the project-affected Dolakha district last week. Public shareholders, including the locals of Dolakha, will hold 25 per cent ownership in the project.
Though the application process for the primary shares for general public was carried out through Centralised Applications Supported by Blocked Amount (C-ASBA) system from member banks of ASBA, the issue manager could not block previous applicants of the earlier offering which was conducted manually.
Similarly, some 18.3 million units of shares (17.28 per cent) have already been allotted to the members of Employees Provident Fund (EPF), while staffers of EPF and the project received 2.88 per cent of the shares (304,290 units). Likewise, staffers of Upper Tamakoshi and NEA have been allotted 3.84 per cent (4.07 million units) of the shares.
The much-awaited hydropower project is expected to start electricity generation by mid-July next year. The model project is expecting commercial generation by mid-November, 2019.
Last week, the project office extended the completion deadline by six months as it wasn’t going to be able to start operating one of its six turbines by December 2018 and complete the entire project by April 2019 as originally planned due to earthquakes, the Indian trade blockade and other technical issues including dillydallying by one of the contractors as reasons for the delay in the national pride project where 95 per cent of the construction works have been completed.
The delays has pushed the cost of the project that was initially planned to be constructed at a cost Rs 35 billion but the final bill is now expected to reach Rs 70 billion.

Sebon scraps rule of parking money collected in IPO,FPO at NRB

While bankers are ruing shortage of loan-able funds due to slow growth in deposits, Securities Board of Nepal (Sebon) has scrapped a rule that required the money collected in the initial public offering (IPO) or follow-up public offering (FPO) to be parked at the central bank for a certain period of time.
The decision comes in the wake of 'credit crunch' in the banking system which has crippled the capacity of the banks and financial institutions (BFIs) to float loans to borrowers.
“The rule has been scrapped because there are complaints of liquidity shortage in the market which was also affecting the secondary market," deputy spokesperson of the Sebon Niranjaya Ghimire, said. "Also the requirement is soon becoming redundant due to implementation of Applications Supported by Blocked Amount (ASBA) system."
Earlier, issue manager of any IPO or FPO was required to deposit all the money collected in the process at its account in the Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB) within six days of closing of the issuance for at least six days. Such requirement had also worsened the bank’s liquidity position as huge fund, like Rs 52 billion of money collected from the FPO of Nepal Life Insurance Company Ltd, gets stuck in the central bank’s vault.
With the new directives from the regulator of the capital market, the central bank is also expected to release Rs 52 billion tomorrow that would help ease the credit crunch in the financial system. Welcoming the Sebon decision, bankers also say the scrapping of rule will provide some respite to them.
With FPOs of some other big companies in pipeline, bankers had worried that more funds would end up at central bank’s vault, worsening their liquidity problem. The central bank's vault is already swollen by over Rs 200 billion also due to government's inability to spend and aggressive revenue mobilisation by the second quarter end.