Warburg Pincus has sold almost half of its remaining stake in Delhi-based Moser Baer India Ltd through open market transactions with a huge haircut. The PE firm, which had pumped in over $200 million in public listed optical media products maker during 2000-04, has part-exited, having lost over 95 per cent of its investment value, as per VCCircle estimates.
The PE firm had sold 24.5 per cent of its holding in Moser Baer in May this year and was holding around 9 per cent stake in the firm.
As per stock market disclosures, one of its investment entities, ELM International Ltd., sold its entire stake of 3.35 per cent in a series of open market transactions, while another entity, Randall Investments Ltd., also cut its holding in the last one month. The two entities sold around 4.2 per cent stake for an estimated sum of a little less than $1 million.
The Moser Baer scrip has been hovering at around Rs 6-7 a share for the past one month. This means the PE firm sold shares at half the price at which it had earlier sold bulk of its stake in the company.
Post transaction, Warburg Pincus holds 5.7 per cent stake in Moser Baer.
This part-exit adds to the mixed bag of returns from Warburg Pincus’ India portfolio. Early this year, it had completed an exit from private sector lender Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd, garnering over Rs 3,400 crore ($661 million) in the process spread over nine months. Warburg Pincus held 9.28 per cent stake in Kotak Mahindra before it started exiting in June 2011. This marked the largest exit by Warburg Pincus after India’s biggest mobile operator Bharti Airtel, where it encashed $1.83 billion on its original $290 million investment.
In March last year, Warburg Pincus had exited its five-year-old investment in gem & jewellery exporter Vaibhav Gems with an estimated 92.5 per cent haircut.
(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)
