Simple, practical explainers on the stock market, IPOs and investing.
Looking for one term? The A–Z glossary lists every explainer on one page.
88 articles
Every Indian offer document carries a table comparing the issuer with listed peers. The companies in that table are selected by the issuer, and the selection quietly shapes whether the price looks reasonable. This guide explains how peers are chosen, where the framing creeps in, and how to test comparability.
The registrar to the issue is the SEBI-registered agency that reconciles every bid against every bank block, decides which applications are technically valid, runs the allotment on the approved basis, and instructs the credits and unblocks. It is also the one desk that holds a complete record of what happened to your application.
When a company lists, most of its share capital cannot legally be sold yet. Lock-in is the rule that freezes those shares for a defined period. This guide covers who it binds, how depositories enforce it, what expiry does to tradable supply, and where the dates are disclosed.
An IPO price band is not an independent appraisal of what a company is worth. It is a number the seller proposes, supported by chosen metrics and a chosen peer set. This guide walks through the methods used, the pre-issue and post-issue share counts that change every ratio, and how to test the logic yourself.
Book running lead managers do the due diligence, draft the offer document, market the issue to institutions, build the book and recommend the price. They also work for the seller and are paid by the seller, which is the single most important thing a retail applicant should keep in mind while reading their work.
Grey market premium is quoted everywhere during an IPO, yet it comes from an informal network with no regulator, no published trade record and very little money changing hands. This article sets out why that combination makes the number fragile, easy to influence, and a weak foundation for an application decision.
Every IPO announcement carries two rupee figures that beginners routinely confuse. Face value is an accounting denomination fixed in the company's own records; issue price is what an applicant actually pays. This article separates the two, shows how the premium between them is accounted for, and explains why a small face value says nothing about cheapness.
The financial statements in an IPO offer document are restated onto one accounting basis so the years can be compared. This article walks through what to test in them: revenue quality, margin trend, cash conversion, working capital, debt, related-party dealings, one-off items, and why the final reported year so often looks the strongest.
Before a company opens its public issue, it can sell shares privately to a small group of chosen investors. This note explains who buys in a pre-IPO placement, how such a round can shrink the fresh issue, where the transaction appears in the offer document, and how carefully to read the price it was done at.
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