Hindustan Zinc continues to slide, shares slip below ₹500 mark amid ongoing OFS

Hindustan Zinc (HZL) shares continued their downtrend in Monday's session amid the offer for sale (OFS) launched by its parent firm, Vedanta. The stock in the opening trade was quoting at ₹489.60, down 5.84% on the BSE.

Vedanta last week launched an OFS to sell a 3.31% stake in the company. The offer received an impressive response from the market participants.

Non-retail investors placed bids for 6.3 crore shares, according to a regulatory filing.

According to the BSE data, total bids for 6,36,05,891 equity shares were received against 5,14,40,329 equity shares, representing 1.22% of the equity on offer, resulting in an oversubscription of 1.23 times, or 137.39%.

Bids were received at a price of ₹494.54 per share against the floor price of ₹486 per share.

Further, Vedanta said on Friday it would offer an additional up to 8,23,04,527 equity shares, representing 1.95% of the equity capital, as an oversubscription option to retail and non-retail investors on Monday, August 19.

"We wish to intimate the stock exchanges of our intention to exercise the Oversubscription Option in the Offer to the extent of 1,21,65,562 equity shares (representing 0.29% of the total issued and paid-up equity share capital of the company) in addition to 5,14,40,329 equity shares," Vedanta said in the filing.

"Accordingly, the total offer size will be up to 6,36,05,891 equity shares, representing 1.51% of equity capital," the filing said. Of these, 63,60,590 equity shares, i.e., 10% of the offer, would be reserved for allocation to retail investors, it added.

At the end of the June quarter, Vedanta owned a 64.92% stake in HZL while the government had 29.54%. Vedanta plans to demerge its aluminium, oil and gas, power, base metals, and iron and steel businesses into separate listed entities.

On Friday, shares of the company ended 9.25% lower at ₹519.95 apiece on the BSE.