Yes Bank share offering succeeds, second time around

Mumbai: Yes Bank Ltd has succeeded on its second attempt to raise capital, as friendlier conditions in financial markets allowed the Indian lender to put last year’s failed share offering behind it.

The Mumbai-based bank, led by billionaire chief executive officer Rana Kapoor, raised about $750 million through the sale of new shares at Rs1,500 each, an exchange filing late Wednesday showed. The decision to reduce the size of the sale helped smooth the deal, six months after Kapoor blamed a misunderstanding by his bankers for the failure of a $1 billion offering.

“Cutting the quantum of the share sale amount by one fourth, and risk-on mode in the global capital markets helped the bank,” said Siddharth Purohit, a Mumbai-based analyst at Angel Broking Ltd. The 32.7 million new Yes Bank shares were offered at a 1.2% discount to the closing price of Rs1,518.60 last Thursday, the day the sale was launched.

The successful share offering will allow Yes Bank to continue the rapid recent expansion of its loan book, the fastest among Indian lenders. Analysts at Deutsche Bank AG had warned in January that, in the absence of a capital raising, the bank would need to cut the pace of credit growth by about a third.

The latest offering was helped by more welcoming conditions in Indian financial markets after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sweeping electoral win earlier this month in the state of Uttar Pradesh. At the same time, investors have been more willing to take on risk in emerging markets like India after Donald Trump’s November US election victory.

Another difference with last year’s capital raising was the much-truncated list of banks arranging the offering, and the substitution of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. with Bank of America Corp. After last year’s capital raising fell apart, Yes Bank cited the banks’ “misinterpretation” of new rules for so-called qualified institutional placements as a reason for the decision to abandon the offering. Goldman Sachs declined to comment.

Eight companies had successfully used the route to raise Rs880 crore ($140 million) before the bank’s failed share sale, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The previous offering was deferred after a plunge in Yes Bank shares, which have since recovered strongly. This allowed it to price its new offering well above the range of Rs1,350 to Rs1,410 in last year’s attempt.

Under Kapoor, the second billionaire created by India’s banking sector after Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd’s Uday Kotak, profits have risen to the extent that Yes Bank offers the highest return on equity among local lenders. The bank had 964 branches and loans of Rs1.17 trillion as of 31 December, exchange filings show.

Yes Bank also strengthened its capital with the sale of Rs3,000 crore of perpetual bonds in December. The so-called AT1 bonds helped boost the lender’s overall capital adequacy ratio to 16.9% as of 31 December, from 15% three months earlier, exchange filings show.