Indian IT company Coforge Ltd has dropped its plan to float an initial public offering in the US and is instead raising capital from local markets.
Coforge informed the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it was withdrawing its registration statement for a US listing as it didn’t want to conduct a public offering at this time. However, it said it might file for a listing in the future.
The company didn't specify any reason for withdrawing the listing plan.
Separately, the company informed Indian stock exchanges late last week that it intends to raise Rs 3,200 crore (about $385 million) via a share sale to institutional investors.
The company had filed documents in November 2021 for a US IPO of up to $100 million. It would have been the fourth Indian IT firm to list in the US by issuing American Depository Receipts (ADR), joining Infosys, Wipro, and Sify.
Coforge was previously known as NIIT Technologies Ltd and majority owned by Hong Kong-based Baring Private Equity Asia. Baring first came in as an investor in 2019 when it signed deals to buy a 30% stake in NIIT Technologies and made an open offer to buy up to 26% more in the Indian company. By the end of that year, Baring ended up owning over 70% stake through an aggregate investment of over Rs 6,075 crore.
Baring was itself acquired by Swedish PE firm EQT in 2022 and renamed as BPEA EQT. In January this year, BPEA EQT was renamed EQT Private Capital Asia.
Coforge’s planned US IPO involved a proposal by the PE firm to sell part of its stake. However, the PE firm sold its entire stake in multiple tranches in 2020, 2021 and last year.
Overall, the PE firm pulled out almost $2.2 billion by selling its stake in Coforge, VCCircle reported last year.
