ITC surges after government sells 2% stake held through SUUTI

The stock of consumer goods and cigarettes maker ITC jumped as much as 5.6% intraday on Tuesday before ending with marginal gains after the government sold a 2% stake in the company held via Specified Undertaking of Unit Trust of India (SUUTI) in three block deals.

With this, the government holding in ITC through SUUTI has come down to 9.17%. The government’s stake sale comes at a time when ITC’s shares are trading at lifetime highs, having gained 14.6% since the beginning of 2017.

Block deal data on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) revealed that the government sold 24.25 crore shares in three blocks of 8.08 crore shares each at R275.85 a share, aggregating to R6,690 crore.

The data further revealed that state-owned LIC picked up the entire stake, which was struck at a R0.95/share discount to ITC’s previous day’s closing price. The government’s divestment kitty for FY17 has increased to more than R37,000 crore – still far from the full target of R56,500 crore it had set in the beginning of the year. Before this deal, the government had raised over R31,000 crore this fiscal year, including a R3,100-crore sale by SUUTI in infrastructure major L&T.

Finance minister Arun Jaitley, in his Budget speech last week, had proposed to raise R72,500 crore in FY18 through disinvestment of public sector undertakings, including the listing of three railway PSUs.

ITC Limited