MUMBAI: The much-awaited NSE IPO will open on Sept 17 and close on Sept 21 with the listing slotted for Sept 24, the bourse said on Friday. With some of the existing shareholders together selling a 5.1% stake in the country’s largest stock exchange, at the upper end of the Rs 1,700-1,785/share price band, the IPO would be worth Rs 22,568 crore.At the upper end of the price band, NSE will command a valuation of Rs 4.4 lakh crore, putting it in the league of companies like Hindustan Unilever (current market capitalisation of Rs 4.5 lakh crore), Titan (Rs 4.4 lakh crore) and Sun Pharma (Rs 4.4 lakh crore).

Pocketing multi-bagger returns

In the IPO, a total of 23 NSE shareholders together are selling a little over 12.6 crore shares of the bourse. The selling shareholders include State Bank of India, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Aranda Investments (Mauritius), MS Strategic (Mauritius), The New India Assurance, SBI Capital Markets, Bank of Baroda, Stock Holding Corp of India, General Insurance Corp, and United India Insurance.At Rs 22,568 crore, NSE’s IPO would be the second biggest such offer in India, behind Hyundai India’s Rs 27,800-crore IPO that closed towards the end of 2024. Earlier, NSE’s IPO was expected to raise about Rs 30,000 crore, which would have made it the largest IPO in India.On Sept 4, markets regulator Sebi had cleared NSE’s IPO documents. During the launch of the bourse’s IPO, Ashishkumar Chauhan, CEO & MD, NSE, said that earlier, in the run-up to the offer, some of its existing investors were willing to sell a higher quantum of shares in the IPO. But closer to the launch of the offer, some shareholders expressed their willingness to part with a lesser number of NSE shares.Those shareholders may have done so in expectation of some upside in the future, Chauhan said. When asked about the price band for the IPO, Chauhan said that it was decided by the merchant bankers who are advising the bourse. “After deliberations and roadshows across the world, our merchant bankers have advised us that this is the price,” he said.The shares of NSE will be listed only on BSE since Sebi doesn’t allow self-listing, meaning an exchange cannot list its own shares on its trading platform. Likewise, BSE is traded only on NSE.However, there’s a provision of ‘permitted to trade’ segment on the bourses. Under this category, even if a stock is not listed, the bourse could allow it to trade on its platform. When asked, Chauhan said that NSE has not written to the regulator to explore such an option for NSE shares to get traded on its own platform.Some of the early investors in NSE, all PSUs, are making up to 5,578 times return in the offer.On Friday, in the unofficial market for stocks, the grey market premium (GMP), the mark-up the NSE stocks could command on listing over the offer price, was Rs 218 per share, indicating a listing price of Rs 2,003. Depending on market conditions and investors’ response to an IPO, GMP keeps fluctuating till the time of listing.