Pine Labs’ Rs 2,080 Cr IPO oversubscribed 2.5x on final day
As of Tuesday, Pine Labs received bids for 24.09 crore shares against 9.79 crore on offer.
The initial public offering of Pine Labs closed with strong demand from institutional and retail investors, while high-net-worth participation continued to lag.
As of 5 p.m. on Tuesday, investors bid for 24.09 crore shares against 9.79 crore on offer, translating to an overall subscription of 2.46 times.
Qualified institutional buyers led the rally, subscribing 4x their allotted 5.24 crore shares. Foreign institutional investors accounted for 8.69 crore of the bids, mutual funds for 10.85 crore, and domestic financial institutions and banks for 1.34 crore.
Retail individual investors maintained steady interest, subscribing 1.22 times their quota of 1.81 crore shares, with 1.90 crore of those bids placed at the cut-off price—suggesting that most small investors were confident bidding at the top end of the price band.
Non-institutional investors remained subdued, subscribing just 0.30 times their reserved 2.72 crore shares. Within this category, large bidders applying for over Rs 10 lakh subscribed only 0.24 times, while those bidding between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh managed 0.40 times.
The employee segment was the clear outlier, oversubscribed 7.35 times, with nearly 9.73 lakh bids for just 1.32 lakh shares—signalling robust internal confidence in Pine Labs’ long-term prospects.
The Gurugram-based firm, which provides merchant payment and digital commerce solutions, has fixed a price band of Rs 210–221 per share.
The IPO comprises a fresh issue of Rs 2,080 crore and an offer for sale (OFS) of up to 82.34 million shares by existing shareholders.
Pine Labs is seeking a post-issue valuation in the range of Rs 24,217 crore ($2.7 billion) to Rs 25,377 crore ($2.8 billion).
The issue is being managed by Axis Capital, Morgan Stanley, Citi, JP Morgan, and Jefferies, with KFin Technologies serving as registrar. The anchor investor round will take place on November 6, a day before the issue opens to the public.
The IPO represents a major exit opportunity for long-time investors, including Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India), Actis, Temasek’s MacRitchie Investments, PayPal, Mastercard, Madison India, Lone Cascade, and Sofina Ventures. Founder Lokvir Kapoor will also sell a portion of his stake.
Peak XV, whose shares were acquired at an average cost of Rs 5.60, could see returns of about 37.5 times at the lower end of the price band. Other investors such as Actis (Rs 71.43), MacRitchie (Rs 76.67), PayPal (Rs 77.78), and Mastercard (Rs 128.62) are expected to clock returns between 1x and 4.5x.
Founder Lokvir Kapoor is set to make the highest return of 451x with his acquisition price of Rs 0.49, taking into account the upper end of the price band at Rs 221.
Not all shareholders will see gains, however. Invesco, which plans to offload up to 3.2 million shares acquired at an average price of Rs 243.89, is expected to book a loss at the IPO price.
Funds from the fresh issue will be used to repay certain borrowings and invest in Pine Labs’ overseas subsidiaries—including Qwikcilver Singapore, Pine Payment Solutions (Malaysia), and Pine Labs UAE—as well as to strengthen IT and cloud infrastructure. Of this, Rs 532 crore will go toward debt repayment, and Rs 769 crore will be earmarked for technology expansion.
(The copy was updated with final numbers.)
Edited by Affirunisa Kankudti