Fair pricing, macros aiding listing pop for new-age tech IPOs: SoftBank’s Sumer Juneja
listing gains snagged by SoftBank’s India portfolio firms Ola Electric, FirstCry and Unicommerce are the result of sensible initial public offering (IPO) pricing, favourable macroeconomic conditions and the growing acceptance of technology firms by the capital markets, said Sumer Juneja, managing partner for India and EMEA at SoftBank.
In an interview to ET on Tuesday, he said that the active participation of domestic mutual funds has helped shore up demand for these public offerings. It’s not true that these new-age IPO are gaining only because of the continuing bull run in the stock markets, he added.
The Masayoshi Son-led Japanese group’s cumulative holdings across the three recently listed companies stand at about $2 billion following their market debut. SoftBank had pumped $400 million into FirstCry, which listed at a premium of 40% to its issue price of Rs 465 per share.
Shares of e-commerce software firm Unicommerce, in which it invested nearly $15 million, listed at a 117% premium to its issue price of Rs 108 while Ola Electric, in which SoftBank owns 22%, is trading 71% up from its listing price of Rs 76.
SoftBank has deployed $10.5 billion across its two editions of the Vision Fund and its balance sheet in India.
“The big picture for us is that we have been the largest tech investor in India,” Juneja said. “The portfolio has performed well, and with the current market value of our public investments and past exits we would have returned $10 billion-plus with a strong portfolio (Meesho, Swiggy,
