BPCL curtails disinvestment activities as government holds privatization plan; stock zooms ~3%

9 Jun 2022 , 12:42 PM

Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL) has informed that it has shut all activities related to the company’s divestment as the government dropped its plan to privatize the firm for now.

In its stock exchange filing, the company stated that, “through a letter dated June 3, 2022, the government has backed off from the present tender to sell its entire 53% stake in the company.”

The firm informed that “All the activities in connection with the disinvestment including the data room have been discontinued.”

This move by the central government to call off privatization came after two out of three bidders walked out.

In April last year, the company opened a virtual room, mostly holding the company’s financial information, for the qualified bidders signing Confidentiality Undertaking (CU).

Company also opened a ‘clean data room’ last year which carried commercially sensitive information of the firm, subject to signing an additional confidentiality agreement.

BPCL stated last month that due to prevailing conditions in the global energy markets, the majority of QIPs have expressed their inability to continue with the current disinvestment of BPCL.

Government’s plan to sell of 52.98% stake in BPCL was part of its Rs1.75 lakh crore disinvestment target for 2021-22. However, the covid-19 outbreak has slowed down the sale process and hence sale was pushed off to 2022-23, before it was completely dropped.

The three bidders include Vedanta, and private equity firms Apollo Global and I Squared Capital’s arm Think Gas. Vedanta’s interest in the company remained intact, but the other two private bidders stepped back.

The buyer would have the ownership of about 15.33% of India’s oil refining capacity and 22% of the fuel marketing if the deal was successful.

At around 12.48 PM, Bharat Petroleum Corporation was trading at Rs332.65 up by Rs8.9 or 2.75% from its previous closing of Rs323.75 on the BSE.