Following a surge of over 45% in its shares at market debut on Tuesday, LG Electronics India’s market capitalization surpassed that of its parent company.
As of 11:15 a.m. local time (1:45 a.m. ET), the market cap of the Indian subsidiary was at 1.14 trillion rupees ($12.83 billion), while the valuation of its parent company stood at 13.84 trillion Korean won ($9.68 billion).
The company’s shares jumped as much as 50% at the open, driven by the highest demand for an Indian IPO since 2008, largely from institutional investors. The shares were last reported trading 45% higher.
The IPO was priced at the upper limit of the band between 1,080 rupees and 1,140 rupees apiece, raising 116 billion rupees ($1.3 billion), and was oversubscribed by more than 54 times, drawing bids totaling around 4.4 trillion rupees, nearly $50 billion, data from the exchange disclosed.
This marked the most subscribed significant Indian IPO since the listing of Reliance Power in 2008, as noted by PRIME Database’s Pranav Haldea to CNBC. There was extensive demand from qualified institutional buyers, who bid 166 times their allotted share. The retail investor portion was oversubscribed 3.55 times.
The IPO was offered as a sale of existing shares—no new shares were created—with parent LG Electronics divesting 101.8 million shares. It was facilitated by a consortium of both international and domestic bookrunners, including Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Axis Capital, BofA Securities, and Citigroup Global Markets India.
Trading for the shares commenced on Tuesday on both the National Stock Exchange of India and the BSE.
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This is the second significant South Korean firm to access the Indian markets in about a year, following Hyundai Motor India’s IPO in October 2024.
LG Electronics India is a subsidiary of South Korea’s LG Electronics. It designs, produces, and markets a wide array of consumer electronics and home appliances including refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, televisions, and smart home devices.
“LG Electronics India differentiates itself as the publicly listed appliance player with the broadest range of offerings and is well-regarded in a majority of the product categories in which it operates,” remarked Himanshu Dugar, a SEBI-registered independent equity research analyst.
As per Redseer Strategy Consultants, India’s electronics and appliances market is anticipated to almost double from around $75 billion in 2024 to an estimated $130 billion to $150 billion by 2029. “Thus, we expect LG Electronics India, being the market leader, will gain from these favorable trends,” Dugar stated.
India remains one of the most active IPO markets globally this year. EY’s recent global report indicates that the country recorded 146 offerings in the third quarter, generating $7.2 billion. This brought the total for the first nine months to 254 transactions worth $11.8 billion, highlighting the robustness of its domestic capital markets, with IPO returns averaging 17.5%.
—CNBC’s Lim Hui Jie contributed to this report.
