The promoters of Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) have pledged 206.09 lakh shares of the company in favour of Credit Suisse AG to raise Rs 430 crore for a group company, according to a regulatory filing.
The shares were held by Gautam S. Adani and Rajesh S. Adani on behalf of SB Adani Family Trust and it comprised 1.01 per cent of the APSEZ share capital.
In a separate filing, APSEZ informed the bourses that the pledge was against the security for the borrowing by Adani Rail Infra Pvt Ltd amounting to Rs 430 crore.
The value of shares being encumbered amounted to over Rs 742.03 crore.
According to the shareholding data of the company, for the period ended June 30, the promoters held 63.57 per cent. Of this, over 37 crore shares, or 28.70 per cent, were pledged or encumbered.
Earlier this week, the same promoters had released a pledge on 78,000 shares of APSEZ. The pledge was removed from JM Financial Credit Solutions Ltd and JM Financial Products Ltd.
The SB Adani Family Trust holds a 39.34 per cent stake in APSEZ.
APSEZ is the largest commercial ports operator in India. According to its website, it accounts for nearly one-fourth of the cargo movement in the country apart from having integrated services across ports, logistics and special economic zones (SEZ).
It has a presence across 10 domestic ports in six maritime states — Gujarat, Goa, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Odisha. Its assets include the Mundra Economic Hub, which spans over 8,000 hectares and it offers investment options as the largest multi-product SEZ, free trade and warehousing zone and domestic industrial zone.
During the first quarter ended June 30, APSEZ saw its net profit dropping to Rs 758 crore from Rs 1,029 crore in the same period of the previous year. This came after its topline fell to Rs 2,293 crore from Rs 2,794 crore in the year-ago quarter as cargo throughput declined 27 per cent during the nationwide lockdown.
The company said during the period, Mundra port became the largest container handling port in India by handling 0.97 million twenty-foot equivalent units.
The pledge comes at a time when there are reports of the group engaged in talks to buy out GVK and some of its partners in the Mumbai airport as it set sight to become India's biggest private airport operator. PTI recently reported that the group is in talks to acquire a 50.5 per cent stake held by GVK Group in Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) and another 23.5 per cent of minority partners, Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), and Bidvest Group.
The Adani group had in March 2019 agreed to acquire 13.5 per cent stake of South African company, Bidvest for over Rs 1200 crore. However, the GVK Group blocked the deal claiming the right of first refusal. But it could not buy Bidvest stake and the matter went to court.
The Adani group which is betting big on the airports sector has won the bids to run six Airport Authority-built non-metro airports in Lucknow, Jaipur, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Thiruvananthapuram, and Mangalore.
