Rs 11,000 cr worth shares offloaded in Indigo block deal, Rakesh Gangwal likely seller

Mumbai, Aug 29 (IANS) Shares of budget carrier Indigo marginally fell in the morning trade on Thursday after a block deal where at least 2.3 crore shares of the aviation major exchanged hands in a deal worth Rs 11,000 crore at a floor price of Rs 4,760 apiece.

Nearly 6 per cent stake in InterGlobe Aviation, parent company of IndiGo, were sold in a block deal.

According to multiple reports, promoter and co-founder Rakesh Gangwal is the likely seller in the block deal.

At 9.15 am, a block of 22,652,485 shares changed hands on the BSE at a price of Rs 4,762.55 per share. Further, 23.23 million shares had changed hands on the BSE.

According to reports, Gangwal was expected to offload nearly 5.8 per cent of his stake in InterGlobe Aviation. At the end of the June quarter, Gangwal held 5.89 per cent stake in IndiGo.

Earlier reports suggested that Gangwal was aiming to sell stake valued at Rs 6,750 crore. However, this amount was increased to Rs 11,000 crore.

The latest block deal follows previous deals which has seen Gangwal paring his stake in a bid to exit IndiGo airline.

Meanwhile, the domestic air passenger traffic in the country grew 4.7 per cent (year-on-year) to over 9.23 crore in the January-July period, from more than 8.81 crore during the corresponding period of the previous year, according to latest data by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

During the seven-month reporting period, budget carrier IndiGo carried more than 5.61 crore passengers, clocking a massive market share of 60.8 per cent, followed by Tata Group-run Air India flying over 1.25 crore passengers with 13.6 per cent share and Vistara registering a market share of 9.6 per cent with 89 lakh air passengers at the third position.

Indigo last month reported net profit at Rs 2,728 crore for the April-June quarter — a drop of 11.7 per cent from Rs 3,090.6 crore in the same quarter last year.

The operational revenue of the airline went up 17.3 per cent to Rs 19,570.7 crore in Q1 FY25, as compared to Rs 16,683.1 crore in the same quarter the previous year.

–IANS

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