Allied Blenders and Distillers cuts IPO size, refiles draft papers to raise Rs 1,500 cr

Allied Blenders and Distillers IPO size reduced to Rs 1500 crore from Rs 2000 crore earlier

Liquor maker Allied Blenders and Distillers has refiled the preliminary papers with the capital market regulator for raising Rs 1,500 crore from the public.

The initial public offering (IPO) is proposed to be a mix of fresh shares worth Rs 1,000 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of shares worth Rs 500 crore by the promoters.

Promoter Bina Kishore Chhabria will sell Rs 250 crore of shares in the OFS, while other promoter Resham Chhabria Jeetendra Hemdev will offload shares worth Rs 125 crore. Neesha Kishore Chhabria, the part of promoter group, also intends to sell Rs 125 crore of shares in the OFS.

The OFS size has been reduced to half at Rs 500 crore from Rs 1,000 crore proposed in the in the previous draft red-herring prospectus (DRHP) the company had filed with the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi). All the three promoters later lowered their OFS portion to cut it down to half.

The Mumbai-based liquor firm had filed the first draft IPO papers in June 2022 with a target to raise Rs 2,000 crore from listing. Sebi gave the green light to the IPO in December 2022, but the company didn't proceed despite positive market conditions.

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India's third largest IMFL (Indian-made foreign liquor) company may consider raising of Rs 200 crore through a preferential issue or any other method, before the filing of the red herring prospectus with the Registrar of Companies for a pre-IPO placement.

If the company raises funds in the pre-IPO placement, then the fresh issue size will be reduced accordingly.

As of August 2023, the company's product portfolio comprised 17 brands of IMFL across whisky, brandy, rum and vodka.

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Allied Blenders that owns brands like Officer’s Choice Whisky, Sterling Reserve, Officer’s Choice Blue and ICONiQ Whisky generates most of its business from the whisky segment which contributed 97.36 percent to revenue from operations in FY23.

With a market share of 8.2 percent in the IMFL space by sales volumes in FY23, the company intends to utilise Rs 720 crore of the net fresh issue proceeds for repaying debt, and the rest for general corporate purposes.

The total debt on its books stood at Rs 808.12 crore as of December 2023. This means the debt burden of the 100 percent promoters-owned company will be reduced significantly after repayment.

ICICI Securities, Nuvama Wealth Management and ITI Capital are the book running lead managers to the issue.