Amtek ropes in Morgan Stanley to sell minority stake in foreign arms
NEW DELHI: Amtek Auto Morgan Stanley has been hired to find a buyer, Chairman Arvind Dham said. This is because the auto component maker is trying to get out of its cash woes, exacerbated by bond defaults.
Dham said Thursday that it plans to sell a 30 percent stake in some of its overseas subsidiaries. “The rest of the story of our group (completely) selling off overseas assets is not true. You are hearing it from the horse’s mouth,” he told The Economic Times. The overseas assets are handled by its subsidiary Amtek Global Technologies. Private equity funds or strategic investors are sought.
After a series of large acquisitions, Amtek Auto is heavily indebted. The group has a consolidated debt of around Rs. 175 billion. The recent target is to bring this down to about Rs 10,000 crore.
The company has defaulted on its Rs 80 crore bonds due on September 20th. The company is reportedly looking for 1,000 crore loans to repay creditors. The debt has to be repaid 90% after default. Only if it is repaid within days, it is considered a non-performing asset.
After the disaster, domestic and international institutional investors pulled out of the stock. 9 Market capitalization fell 72% in the current month’s quarter, but institutional ownership began to fall to 20.92% as of Sept. 30 from 35.3% three months earlier.
On Thursday, the stock closed down 0.3% at Rs 43.70 on the BSE. The group expects to raise about 10 month billion dollars (Rs 64.82 billion) in the next six months. Half of this will come from the sale of shares in Amtek Global Technologies and the rest from non-core assets. In an interview with The Economic Times last month, Dharm said its overseas business is performing well despite pressure on its Indian operations.
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