Allied Blenders and Distillers Limited, the makers of Officer’s Choice whisky, has filed a draft prospectus with Sebi to raise Rs 2,000 crore through the company’s initial public offering (IPO).
The IPO consists of a fresh issue of Rs 1,000 crore and an offer for sale of Rs 1,000 crore from existing promoters Bina Kishore Chhabria, Resham Chhabria, Jeetendra Hemdev and Neesha Kishore Chhabria from the promoter group.
The liquor firm may also consider a pre-IPO placement of equity shares aggregating to Rs 200 crore. If such a placement is undertaken, then the size of the fresh issue will be reduced. The company said in the draft prospectus that it plans to utilise the funds raised to retire outstanding borrowings and for general corporate purposes.
“Our company intends to utilise Rs 7,089.84 million (Rs 709.98 crore) from the net proceeds and towards prepayment or scheduled repayment of all, or a portion, of the principal amount on certain loans availed by our company,” Allied Blenders and Distillers said in its prospectus.
The company’s total outstanding borrowings were Rs 926.89 crore as of December 31, 2021.
Allied Blenders and Distillers is the third-largest IMFL company in India in terms of sales volume, with an annual sales volume of 25.52 million cases across four categories — whisky, brandy, rum and vodka. Some of the major brands include Officer’s Choice, Sterling Reserve, Jolly Roger and Class 21. It had an overall market share of 8.2 per cent in the IMFL market by sales volume in FY2021.
The company operates a distillery at Telengana and relies on 30 bottling facilities. The company’s in-house distilling capacity of extra neutral alcohol is 54.75 million litres per year.
ICICI Securities, Axis Capital, JM Financial, Kotak Mahindra Capital and Equiras Capital are book-running lead managers of the IPO.
