Billionaire Gautam Adani and entities owned by him bought shares worth ₹32,480.6 crore ($3.94 billion) in five of the group’s 10 listed companies in 2023, more than the ₹23,551 crore ($2.85 billion) of shares they sold, stock market data showed.
The companies are Adani Enterprises Ltd, Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Ltd, Adani Green Energy and Adani Energy Solutions Ltd.
The data refutes the perception that the conglomerate was forced to sell advertising equity in March last year after a scathing report by US short seller Hindenburg Research in January hammered share prices of group firms. Also, this is in addition to the money spent by Adani to take back some of the shares pledged with banks, because the percentage of equity offered as a guarantee with the creditors reduced across all companies.
Among these five companies, promoters still ended 2023 with less ownership in four companies—Adani Enterprises, Adani Power, Adani Green Energy and Adani Energy Solutions, compared to 2022. This happened because promoters started buying shares in the second half of the last year when they were valued 30-40% higher than the time they sold shares in the first half of last year.
Promoters ended 2023 with higher ownership in Adani Ports and SEZ, even as their investment remained unchanged in Adani Total Gas, Adani Wilmar, ACC, Ambuja Cement and NDTV.
Mint could not ascertain the source of the funds of the nine promoters who bought shares in the five Adani companies.
An email sent to the Adani Group on Saturday seeking comment went unanswered.
Interestingly, SB Adani Family Trust, the promoter unit that owns a majority of shares in all five public companies, sold the majority of shares in three entities. But the Adani Group used Mauritius-headquartered entities to buy back shares.
Gautam Adani and his four brothers, Vinod, Rajesh, Mahasukh and Vasant are beneficiaries of Ahmedabad-based SB Adani Family Trust.
The past year has been a rollercoaster for the conglomerate after a January report by Hindenburg Research accused it of share manipulation and accounting fraud, and said it had “pulled the biggest hoax in corporate history”. The group denied all the allegations, but shareholders were upset as the share price fell over the next three months.
But the conglomerate managed to ride out the storm by paying back $2.65 billion, which it raised by putting up shares as collateral to the banks. Improving financial health helped investor sentiment as stocks rose. Adani’s listed businesses measured Ebitda of ₹71,253 crore in the first six months of 2023-24, more than the ₹70,000-crore-odd Ebitda of other companies comprising the country’s FMCG sector, including Hindustan Unilever and Nestle, over the past four years. Ebitda means earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization.
By October 2023, Adani has managed to secure $3.5 billion in new loans from global banks. In December, confident management launched a series of road shows from Pune to attract wealthy retail investors to buy shares of its listed companies.
Analysts, too, seem to be taking note of the changing fortunes as a bullish note, “India’s Road to Self-Reliance Runs Through Adani”, by Cantor Fitzgerald lifted the group’s shares.
“To that extent, we believe AEL (Adani Enterprises Ltd) is at the heart of everything India wants to accomplish,” Cantor Fitzgerald analysts Brett Knoblauch and Thomas Shinske wrote in a Jan. 28 note.
“AEL is the most trusted company to bring energy resources into India; it owns eight airports that account for ~25% of airline passenger traffic and ~33% of cargo, it is building several data centers across the country, it is contracted to build over 5,000 km of roads, and is an integrated solar manufacturer. and wind equipment for India’s renewable energy ambitions, among many other businesses.”
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Published: 30 Jan 2024, 00:41 IST