Shares of Adani Group companies rebounded up to 8% in early trade on Wednesday after a sharp correction in the previous session as the management refuted a report on debt repayment. On Tuesday, Gautam Adani-controlled listed entities registered their biggest decline in over a month after a report published by The Ken raised questions on whether the conglomerate completed repayment of $2.15 billion in share-backed debt. Triggered by debt repayment concerns, six of the 10 group entities hit 5% lower circuit level while Adani Enterprises ended 7% lower, eroding the cumulative market capitalisation of the conglomerate by ₹50,165 crore.
At 11:00 am, eight out of ten Adani Group stocks were trading in the positive terrain, barring Adani Transmission and Adani Total Gas, led by the flagship Adani Enterprises, which rallied nearly 8%. The group's market capitalisation stood at ₹9.04 lakh crore.
Adani Enterprises shares gained as much as 7.8% to hit an intraday high of ₹1,727 against the previous closing price of ₹1,601.55 on the BSE. While Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone shares rose as much as 5.8%, Adani Power hit 5% upper circuit limit. Among others, Adani Green Energy, Adani Wilmar, ACC, Ambuja Cement, and NDTV gained in the range of 1-3%.
Bucking the trend, Adani Transmission and Adani Total Gas dropped up to 3% at the time of reporting.
The Adani group stocks got a boost after management refuted the news report published by The Ken, a digital publication, which claimed that the Ahmedabad-based conglomerate didn’t complete repayment of $2.15 billion in share-backed debt.
“Adani has completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to $2.15 billion and all corresponding shares pledged for those facilities have been released,” the group said in a statement released post market hours on Tuesday.
The conglomerate also released the current share pledge position (factoring in current stock prices) of the group companies as of March 27, 2023. Adani Green pledged shares reduced to 3.5% from 4.4% as of December 31, 2022, while Adani Port pledged shares came down to 4.7% from 17.3% at the end of December quarter. Similarly, the current pledged shares of Adani Transmission and Adani Enterprises stood at 3.8% and 0.6%, respectively, as compared to 6.6% and 2.7%, respectively, at the end of Q3 FY23.
“After such repayment, listed companies' pledge positions for Adani Green, Adani Ports, Adani Transmission & Adani Enterprises have reduced substantially, and only residual share pledges corresponding to Operating Company (OpCo) facilities remained outstanding,” the release noted.
On March 12, the group said in an exchange filing that it made a full prepayment of margin-linked share-backed financing worth $2.15 billion and also increased equity in its subsidiary Ambuja by prepaying a $500 million facility taken for its acquisition financing. The company said this is in line with promoters’ "commitment" to increase equity contribution. With this, the promoters have now infused $2.6 billion out of a total acquisition value of $6.6 billion for Ambuja and ACC.
"In continuation of promoters’ commitment to repay the promoter leverage, Adani has completed full prepayment of margin linked share backed financing aggregating to USD 2.15 billion, well before the committed timeline of 31 March 2023. In addition to the above, promoters have also prepaid $500 million facilities taken for Ambuja acquisition financing," Adani group said in a statement on March 12.
