Hero Motors IPO: Dates, Price Band, GMP and What the Prospectus Shows

Hero Motors raised null to put a defined part of it into the business rather than into someone's exit. The issue, priced at ₹79–₹84 a share, was open from 16 September 2026 to 18 September 2026 and listed on 23 September 2026.

This page sets out what the filings actually say — the dates, the money, the ratios the prospectus discloses and the grey-market number doing the rounds — and is deliberately clear about which of those is a fact and which is a rumour. Live status, subscription and documents for this issue sit on its IPO Center page.

The offer, in the numbers that decided what applicants paid

• Price band: ₹79 to ₹84 per share, face value ₹10
• Lot size: 178 shares
• Minimum application: ₹14,952 at the upper band — one lot
• Type: Book Building
• Registrar: KFin Technologies Limited
• Book-running lead managers: ICICI Securities Limited, DAM Capital Advisors Limited and JM Financial Limited

A retail application was capped at ₹2,00,000, so the most a retail applicant could put in was 13 lots — ₹1,94,376 at the upper band. Bidding above that moves an application into the non-institutional category, where the allotment maths is different. QIB, NII and retail categories explains what changes.

What the company says it will do with the money

The prospectus lists these objects for the fresh issue:

• Repayment/prepayment/redemption, in full or in part, of certain outstanding borrowings availed by our Company
• Capital expenditure of our Company through purchase of equipment for expansion in capacity of our Gautam Buddha Nagar, Uttar Pradesh facility
• Funding inorganic growth through unidentified acquisitions and other strategic initiatives and general corporate purposes

Objects are a commitment, not a forecast. They are disclosed in the offer document, monitored after listing, and changing them later needs shareholder approval — which is why they are one of the more reliable things in a prospectus.

Who the shares are reserved for, and what that tells you

The issue reserves 50% for qualified institutional buyers, 15% for non-institutional investors and 35% for retail.

That is the standard split for an issuer meeting the ICDR track-record test. Retail gets a third of the book, which is the more forgiving of the two structures when an issue is heavily subscribed.

The financials the prospectus actually discloses

These are the ratios from the company's own red herring prospectus, for the financial year ended 31 March 2026. We checked each of them against that document rather than taking them from an aggregator.

• Earnings per share: ₹1.15
• Net asset value per share: ₹12.72
• Return on net worth: 8.53%
• Return on equity: 8.56%
• Return on capital employed: 19.77%
• Operating EBITDA margin: 12.44%

At the upper band of ₹84, the issue was priced at about 73.0 times FY26 earnings. That is roughly 6.6 times the disclosed net asset value of ₹12.72 a share. Both are arithmetic on the two numbers above, not a valuation opinion — a multiple only means something next to comparable companies, which is what peer comparison in an IPO is for.

The grey market number, and what it is not

Our desk's most recent reading is a grey-market premium of zero — a quote exists, and it is flat.

Now the caveat, and it is not a formality. The grey market is an unofficial, unregulated market in applications and allotments. It is not an exchange, the price is not a quotation, nobody supervises it, and the number changes daily on thin volume. It has been badly wrong in both directions. Treat it as sentiment, never as a forecast — grey-market premium risks sets out how it goes wrong, and IPO GMP explained covers what it is.

The dates that follow the close

• Bidding opened: 16 September 2026
• Bidding closed: 18 September 2026
• Basis of allotment: 21 September 2026
• Refunds initiated: 22 September 2026
• Shares credited to demat: 22 September 2026
• Listing: 23 September 2026

If you applied, the next thing that happens is the basis of allotment. An application whose UPI mandate was never approved does not reach it at all, which is worth ruling out before reading a "not allotted" result as bad luck — UPI mandate failures explains how to tell.

Allotment is decided by the registrar, KFin Technologies Limited, and in an oversubscribed retail category it is a lottery on lots rather than a proportionate cut. How to check your allotment status and the basis of allotment cover both halves of that.

Reading this after the close

Nothing on this page is a recommendation. It is the filing, the arithmetic on it, and one unofficial number clearly labelled as such. IPO risks for retail investors is worth reading precisely when an issue is being written about enthusiastically.

Figures come from the company's red herring prospectus and from NSE's issue data as at the dates stated, and issues change: bands are revised, dates move, and an issue can be withdrawn. CAPITA1 is an information service, not a broker, and is not registered with SEBI as an investment adviser — nothing here is investment advice.