SME IPOs Continue to See High Retail Interest

Retail investors in the country are increasingly placing their bets on small and medium enterprises (SME) IPOs rather than mainboard issues.

- SURENDER NEGI

Consider this: Of the 240 SME IPOs in 2024, 36 (15%) received retail subscriptions of over 500 times, while 139 (57.9%) saw bids exceeding 100 times, latest data showed.

For the 91 mainboard IPOs/FPOs, none saw a retail subscription of over 500 times. The segment did see some demand, with seven (7.6%) getting retail subscriptions of 100x or over, but it could not rake up the big numbers like the SME issues.

While all the SME issues were oversubscribed by retail investors during the year, four mainboard ones were undersubscribed, including Hyundai Motor India. The trend seemed to have continued from the previous year, which also saw the retail lot log in bigger subscription numbers in SME IPOs compared with the mainboard ones.