RailTel IPO is Live on BSE and NSE - All Details Inside

RailTel Corporation of India, the telecom infrastructure "miniratna" has announced their IPO, which is listed on both the BSE and NSE. The Offer Launch date was on 16th February and interested investors can buy shares till 18th February.

All About RailTel

RailTel is an ICT infrastructure provider with their key projects of note being RailWire and Google Station. It was incorporated in 2000 and is a Category I Central Public Sector Enterprise.  It is to be noted that the company was initially created in order to modernize the railways' interconnectivity over telephone and internet. However, in recent years, the public sector enterprise has also started as an ISP across the country. The Government-run enterprise has been consistently debt-free.  Also, apart from their ISP services, RailTel also offers VPN services and National Long Distance services by leasing optical fiber cables. Their other services involve providing support to networking equipment of telecom network providers and providing space for microwave towers.

What is in the RailTel IPO

The total value of the IPO is 819.24 crores, with 8,71,53,369 equity shares at a value of Rs. 10 per share. The IPO is, as is with any other IPOs, a bid to raise cash for the corporation. Since the corporation is Center-owned, it means that they are dependent on the government for the majority of their business. This is in part the reason of this IPO. They want to strengthen their other revenue streams such as their ISP and telecom infratech businesses.

IPO's Performance So Far

On the first day, the IPO was subscribed over 3.29 times, and on the second day, the IPO was subscribed 6.6 times. RailTel can gather some momentum because the company is in the public sector and there is trust around it. Also, on Monday, they were able to raise around 244  crores from 14 anchors investors, which can go a long way in their long-term plan of expanding their Railwire business.

Future of RailTel

The Public sector company has been on the rise for the last few years. They have the infrastructure to back themselves up and the backing of the government. It remains to be seen where they will go from here but with their newfound liquidity, they will definitely expand their RailWire venture.