Is Speciality Restaurants' IPO really a success?

Even though it ended on a good note, it was a bumpy ride for the company. Demand was weak on the first two days, and only on the last day did offers come pouring in.

In an interview to CNBC-TV18, explained V Jayasankar of Kotak Investment Banking explains that this phenomenon is not surprising because of the Indian market’s 100% cash margin rule. “Institutional investors tend to come on the last day because no one wants to block their money for the first one or two days,” he explained.

He further adds that the lack of US investors was another reason for the bulk of the demand coming in on day three.

Commenting on the weak demand from the retail side, Jayasankar says that it is more difficult to influence the retail mood given the fall in the market. “You must realize that retail investors tend to be far more sentiment focused than fundamental focused,” he added.

Also read: Are investors hungry for Specialty Restaurants' IPO?

Below is an edited transcript of his interview with Mitali Mukherjee and Reema Tendulkar. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: What’s the mood like in the IPO market? Speciality IPO sailed through, it got a decent response, but prior to that companies had to withdraw due to lack of appetite. Are we seeing a lot of small and midcaps cuing up go in for an IPO?

A: I would say the Speciality Restaurant IPO which closed successfully augers well for capital markets because it shows that the markets are open in pockets. What we did was we kept the timing of the IPO very flexible and focused on building a very strong momentum with institutional investors. The moment we saw demand build up, that’s when we launched that transaction. In that sense, you can say that on the back of a strong demand momentum for institutional investors, it is possible to get transactions successfully done in this market.

Q: Not that smooth though in terms of sailing. Large part of it happened at the very tail end of the day and you still didn’t manage to get even one times in terms of retail. The big criticism was that perhaps Speciality had been over priced and was way too expensive for a market like this especially. How would you respond to that criticism and the point that retail is still not coming into some of these issues?

A: Let me take that into two separate parts. The first part is about the response coming on the last day. You have to realize that the Indian market is very unique because we are perhaps the only market that asks for a 100% margin which means that every application has to be backed by 100% cash margin. Therefore, what tends to happen is all institutional investors and all other category of investors tend to come on the last day because no one wants to block their money for the first one or two days. So bulk of the response coming on the last day is kind of a given when you have a 100% cash margin.

Secondly, this was a transaction where US investors could not participate. So typically what happens is that you do find some US investors put in demand on day two because day three doesn’t really work fine for them. But since we did not market to the US investors, we didn’t have demand from them. So therefore you saw bulk of the demand coming on day three.

Coming to the retail investors, I want to highlight two points. Point number one, when we launched a transaction, the Sensex was little above 17,000. On the day that the transaction opened, the Sensex fell by about 325 points and on day three the market opened weaker with the Sensex going below 16,000. So you must realize that retail investors tend to be far more sentiment focused than fundamental focused. So though we knew that the institutional demand was very strong, we were anticipating between four-five times the QIB book, it is not really possible to influence the retail mood given the fall of Sensex by about 1000 points on the last five-six days and given what had happened to some of the other IPOs in the recent past.

There is so much talk about problem in Europe, there is so much talk about problems in India sometimes a bit too, and some of these really impact retail investors much more than the institutional investors.