The Indian Life Insurance Company’s board on Friday approved the insurer’s initial public offering in principle, but requested certain clarifications and minor changes to the draft IPO documents, people familiar with the matter said.
If the issues are resolved to clear the draft red herring prospectus (DRHP), the 15-member board could meet again in the evening or even Saturday morning, these people said.
The DRHP is expected to be submitted by Monday at the latest, but may also be submitted on the weekend.
“The situation is very fluid. Every comma and full stop is being checked and rechecked, which is a huge amount of work because of the size of the LIC,” said one of the people. “Board members have been told to meet at short notice, so … work is in full swing,” the person said.
“There’s some process to follow, which is why the filing on Friday was delayed, but we’re very close and it’s going to happen in days or even hours,” said a second person involved in the process.
Actuarial firm Milliman Advisors fixed the company’s embedded value (EV) at Rs 500 crore. EV is a financial measure of a life insurance company’s future cash flow. Insurers are valued at multiples of EV.
“Currently, it is fair to assume that LIC is valued at 3.5 times its embedded value for a total market valuation of Rs 175 crore,” said Manish Ostwal, an analyst at Nirmal Bang Securities.
Ostwal said HDFC Life, the most highly valued life insurer today, has a market valuation of Rs 1.25 crore, more than four times the EV of Rs 30,000 crore as of December.
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