Ahead of IPO, Prudent Corporate Advisory Services garners Rs 159 cr from anchor investors

Retail wealth management firm Prudent Corporate Advisory Services on Monday said it has raised a little over Rs 159 crore from anchor investors ahead of its initial share sale.

The company has decided to allocate a total of 25,30,651 equity shares to anchor investors at Rs 630 apiece, aggregating the transaction size to Rs 159.43 crore, as per the circular uploaded on BSE.

Societe Generale, Kuber India Fund, DSP Mutual Fund (MF), HDFC MF, Axis MF, L&T MF, UTI MF, Canara Robeco MF, Motilal Oswal MF, Aditya Birla Sun Life MF, Kotak MF and HSBC MF are among the anchor investors.

The initial share-sale of 85,49,340 equity shares comprises an offer of sale of 82,81,340 equity shares by Wagner Ltd and up to 2,68,000 equity shares by Shirish Patel.

At present, investor Wagner owns a 39.91 per cent shareholding, and Shirish Patel, Whole-time Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company has a 3.15 per cent stake.

The IPO with a price band of Rs 595-630 per share will be open for public subscription on May 10-12. At the upper end of the price band, the firm will raise around Rs 538.61 crore via IPO.

Prudent Corporate Advisory Services is one of the leading independent retail wealth management services groups (excluding banks) in India and is among the top mutual fund distributors in terms of average assets under management and commission received.

It offers a technology-enabled, comprehensive investment and financial services platform with end-to-end solutions critical for financial products distribution and presence across online and offline channels.

Half of the issue size has been reserved for qualified institutional buyers (QIBs), 15 per cent for non-institutional investors and 35 per cent for retail investors. Besides, equity shares aggregating up to Rs 6.5 crore have been reserved for employees.Investors can bid for a minimum of 23 shares and in multiples thereof.

As of December 31, 2021, the company's assets under management from the mutual fund distribution business (AUM) stood at Rs 48,411.5 crore with 92.14 per cent of their total AUM being equity-oriented.

The company provided wealth management services to 1,351,274 unique retail investors through 23,262 mutual fund distributors on their business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) platform and is spread across 110 locations in 20 states.

Also, the number of AMFI Registration Number (ARN) holders empanelled with them stood at 23,262, representing 18.46 per cent of the industry.

ICICI Securities, Axis Capital and Equirus Capital are the book running lead managers to the issue.