Adani Group is planning to sell its ten-year-old NBFC, Adani Capital, and three private equity groups are reportedly all set to make binding bids for the shadow bank. Gautam Adani is looking to exit non-core businesses to conserve capital for the principal operations.
The three equity firms include Bain Capital, Carlyle Group, and Cerberus Capital Management.
Promoters own nearly 90 per cent of Adani Capital. While the remaining 10 per cent is owned by former Lehman Brothers and Macquarie investment banker Gaurav Gupta, who joined the group in 2016, according to a report in The Economic Times. The funds are reportedly looking at a 100 per cent buyout.
However, there has been no official confirmation about the Adani Capital buyout by the Adani Group till now.
Adani Capital has Rs 4,000 crore of assets under management (AUM) and Rs 800 crore in book value. The company is looking to raise 2-2.5 times of the book value, which amounts to a Rs 2,000 crore valuation.
According to the report, the new investor will also invest Rs 1,000–1,500 crore in the company as growth capital.
Adani Capital was looking to raise Rs 1,500 crore via an initial public offering (IPO), and offload a 2 per cent stake. However, this was before the Hindenburg Research report was released. The Adani Group company is working with Avendus on the sale process.
Adani Capital provides retail and wholesale lending across six categories, with agriculture being the largest of them all. It also offers loans to small and medium businesses. The company has a presence in nine states, including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
In the past four years, Adani Group has managed to raise a whopping $9 billion since it started the capital transformation journey for its core infrastructure portfolio in 2019.
