LIC IPO: Retail Portion Fully Subscribed On Day 3

LIC's public offer, the country's biggest-ever IPO, witnessed full subscription of the retail portion on day three on Friday.

The overall issue was subscribed 1.38 times, according to data posted on stock exchanges on 7 pm.

Against 16,20,78,067 shares on offer, 22,36,98,915 bids were received.

However, the Qualified Institutional Buyer (QIB) and Non-Institutional Investor (NII) portions are yet to be fully subscribed.

Subscription for the non-institutional investors' segment stood at 76 per cent, while that for QIBs' portion was lower at 56 per cent.

Retail individual investors bid for 8.53 crore shares as against 6.9 crore shares set aside for this segment -- translating into an oversubscription of 1.23 times.

Of the total, the policyholders' portion was subscribed a little over four times, while that for employees was subscribed three times.

LIC has fixed the price band at Rs 902-949 per equity share for the issue. The offer includes a reservation for eligible employees and policyholders. The retail investors and eligible employees will get a discount of Rs 45 per equity share, while policyholders will get a discount of Rs 60 per share.

LIC's public offer will remain open for a subscription even on weekends to enable people to participate in the mega IPO of the state-owned insurer.

The initial public offering (IPO) will close on May 9.

The government aims to generate about Rs 21,000 crore by diluting a 3.5 per cent stake in the insurance behemoth.

LIC reduced its IPO size to 3.5 per cent from 5 per cent decided earlier due to the prevailing choppy market conditions. Even after the reduced size of about Rs 20,557 crore, LIC IPO is going to be the biggest initial public offering ever in the country.

So far, the amount mobilized from the IPO of Paytm in 2021 was the largest ever at Rs 18,300 crore, followed by Coal India (2010) at nearly Rs 15,500 crore and Reliance Power (2008) at Rs 11,700 crore.

 LIC was formed by merging and nationalizing 245 private life insurance companies on September 1, 1956, with an initial capital of Rs 5 crore.

Its product portfolio comprises 32 individual plans (16 participating and 16 non-participating) and seven individual optional rider benefits. The insurer's group product portfolio comprises 11 group products.

As of December 2021, LIC had a market share of 61.6 per cent in terms of premiums or gross written premium, 61.4 per cent in terms of new business premium, 71.8 per cent in terms of the number of individual policies issued and 88.8 per cent in terms of the number of group policies issued.