419 million shares of RIL rights issue to commence trading on Friday

Nearly 419 million shares of Reliance Industries (RIL), India’s most valuable company, will commence trading on Friday. These shares—issued as part of the Rs 53,124-crore rights issue programme last year—have got converted into fully-paid up equity shares after the payment of the final call option last month.

Shares of RIL last closed at Rs 2,455.85, with a gain of 1.6 per cent over the previous day’s close. The new shares are valued at Rs 1.03 trillion—nearly double their issue price. After including the new shares, RIL’s market cap works out to Rs 16.6 trillion.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s second-most valuable firm, has a market cap of Rs 13.3 trillion.

RIL’s weightage in the benchmark Sensex, Nifty and global indices is expected to edge higher as the new shares will increase its free-float market capitalisation.

Abhilash Pagaria, Head-Alternative & Quantitative Research, Edelweiss Securities estimates passive inflows of $370 million (nearly Rs 2,800 crore) on account of the increase in weight. These inflows, however, will come in a staggered manner as various index readjust the stock’s weight.

The Mukesh Ambani-led firm had fixed the rights issue price at Rs 1,257 per share. The offering was open for subscription between May 20, 2020 and June 3, 2020. Shareholders had to pay Rs 314.25 each in May 2020 and May 2021. The final tranche of Rs 628.5 was collected last month.

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