Skip to main content

CRISIL Open Offer: Subscribe or Not to subscribe?

CRISIL is the leading credit rating company in India. It researches other companies and gives rating to IPOs, other financial debt and equity instruments. It is completely debt free and is one of the best mid to large cap company one can invest in. It also has a good management team and reporting profits year after year. It has always enjoyed being the pioneer in the industry and had good valuations.

Now, McGraw Hill Asian Holdings would like to increase the promoter shareholding in the company through an open offer priced at Rs. 1210/-. The open offer period is from July 24 to August 6, 2013. So, the price would be stabilized around Rs. 1210/- till the end of the offer period and then goes back to the real valuation from the market. McGraw Hill Asian Holdings currently hold 52.77% and would like to increase another 22% through this open offer.

What does it really mean when a company is making an open offer?
If a company is making an open offer, it actually believes in the business more and would like to invest in its vision more. If companies are having excess cash, they can buy back the outstanding shares.

How does it work out?
People who have the company's shares can apply for the open offer. Based on the number of shares tendered, company will give the open offer price to the qualified shares. If the total number of shares tendered at the open offer price is exactly 22% , all the shares tendered would be given the offer price. If the number of shares tendered is more than 22%, say 44%, one in two shares alone would be given the offer price.

Can I buy now? Is it an arbitrage opportunity?
The current quoting price of the stock is Rs. 1185.15/-. The open offer price is Rs. 1200/-. The difference is Rs. 24.75/-. This seems to be an arbitrage. Yes. There is an opportunity. But how big? If you buy the stock now, you will end up paying a brokerage of 0.5 to 1% based on the broker. It sums up to Rs. 11.85/- . After this, you need to pay tax on the profit. This profit will be added to your income and would be taxed at your tax rate. So, if you are in no tax bracket, you can get Rs. 13/- per share as arbitrage.

There is a catch though. Not all the shares tendered will be taken by the company. If everyone tenders their shares (worst case), only one in two shares will be given the open offer price. And, think of the higher risk. If the price of the stock moves down after the open offer (which is most likely based on the previous open offers from various other companies), you will end up making a bigger loss.

Current shareholding stays at
Promoters: 52.77%
Foreign Institutional Investors: 10.35%
Domestic Institutional Investors: 16.15%
Others (Public) : 20.73%

If the Institutional investors doesn't tender any of their shares, every retail investor who gave his shares would get the open offer price.

The arbitrage opportunity was huge when the announcement of the open offer was made on July 23, 2013. The shares were promptly rose by 20%.


I already have CRISIL shares. Should I subscribe for the open offer?
It really depends on your scenario. The open offer price is better than the secondary market price and this would mean you can make better money by selling to the open offer price. The profit that you make here will be taxed as per your tax slab. This profit will be added as your income. If you stand in more that 10% tax slab and you have bought the shares about a year back, it always works out better to sell it in the Secondary market. This is because, there will be no tax for long term gains as STT is paid in transactions made through the market. So, the additional profit that you get from open offer price is completely wiped off by your taxes.

If you had bought this in less than an year and you fall in 20% tax bracket or less, you need to see how much will be your taxes in both the cases and identify the best case. Hopefully, tendering the shares would make much sense for you here.


CRISIL, as such, is a good share to own. It always have moved from one strong position to another strong position. They have a niche and is a great share to hold. If you want to make use of this open offer opportunity, you can probably sell this now and buy this at a lower price after the open offer.

Let me know your comments and on your decision. All the best.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nokia E51 WLAN Settings

Nokia E51 is a smart phone with almost all the features available in it. It looks really slim and comes in three colors. It has loads of features and highlight of them all is the connection through the Internet through WLAN. You can get a Internet connection from the service provider and ask for the wi-fi router. With the wi-fi router, you can connect to the Internet through various other devices like Laptop, Nokia E51 etc., You will be provided with the password for the WLAN connection and only if you enter the password correctly you will be connected to the Internet through that WLAN. As you may expect, this password will be asked only when you connect to Internet through this WLAN for the very first time. In Laptop/Computer, you have Network settings to identify and modify the settings if wrongly entered. But this is somewhat tricky in case of Nokia E51! In Nokia E51, You have the option of Browse WLAN right at the home page for you. If you have customized for something different, u

Igate delisting - Is it worth the bet? - Part II

I said it is worth the bet in my previous post . For delisting, the owner should atleast have 90% of the company's share. This is not the case with Igate which has only 80.1% currently. But it can continue with delisting process as it is approved by the shareholders. The floor price for the delisting process is set at Rs. 288.90/- , which is the 26 day average of high and low price. The current market price is Rs. 374/-. As I said before, there is no ceiling price and one can bid at whatever price he likes! The price will be decided after the Reverse book building process and it is decided by the price quoted by majority of the people much similar to IPO book building. The management then decided to carry on or cancel the de-listing process at will after the exit price is known. If the exit price is approved, then that price will be the price at which the management buy back all the shares. If the price you quoted is greater than exit price then yours will not be bought by the comp

What does customer experience mean?

Customer experience is the experience of the customer from the period they came to know about the existence of the product until they finish using the product. For a hotel like Saravana Bhavan, the customer experience is from the point they came to know about its existence (the day they started) until they are associated with that particular customer (probably, forever for Saravana Bhavan but it depends on each of the customer). For a typical brokerage firm, it is all about how easy it is to open the account and the experience until the customer closes the account. For BSNL or Samsung, it is from when the customer gets to know about their products (the point when they want to buy it) until the time they stopped using it. Customer service is also part of it. Its all about the customer service, once the customer has become the owner of the product. Most of the times, I have seen, the Customer Experience is great until one procure the product or service and after that, because of t