Nagpur-based Abhijeet Power is in advanced stages of seeking regulatory approval for an initial public offering of up to 15 billion rupees and expects to file papers by early February, a senior official told Reuters.
The firm will join rivals Avantha Power, Ind-Barath, Sterlite Energy and Jindal Power to mop up about $3.5 billion in 2011 from the Indian primary market where energy and power firms raised $608 million in 2010 through primary share offers, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
"The IPO is likely to be in the range of 1,200-1,500 crores (12-15 billion rupees)," Rajesh Tulsiani, chief financial officer, said over the telephone on Thursday.
The shares would list in the next financial year and the timing would depend on market conditions, Tulsiani said.
The firm with an operational capacity of 61 megawatt also aims to raise about 5 billion rupees through a pre-IPO placement to private equity players, he added.
"After the filing of DRHP we will be speaking to PE players."
Enam Securities, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, IDFC Capital, UBS, Axis Bank and SBI Capital Markets will be managers to the issue.
AIMING HIGH
Indian power producers, backed by the government's ambitious target of adding 62,000 MW of capacity by 2012, are aggressively setting up power projects across the country to serve an electricity-starved country.
Abhijeet Power, which is setting up 1,740 MW thermal power projects in Jharkhand, 2,640 MW projects in Bihar and a 271 MW project at Nagpur, will use IPO proceeds to partly fund the projects, he added.
It plans to invest around 150 billion rupees through a combination of equity and debt to achieve total capacity of 4,651 MW in the next four years, while it had already tied up nearly 105 billion rupees debt for some of its projects, Tulsiani said.
The firm prefers a combination of captive coal mines as well as coal allocation from state-run coal firms to fuel its projects, he added.
"We are not importing any coal...we only set up the plant when there is a assured supply of coal."
