Aug 5 (Reuters) – Manipal Health Enterprises rose sharply in its market debut on Wednesday, valuing India’s largest multispecialty hospital network at about $9.03 billion.
The shares rose as much as 10.7% to 653.10 rupees on the National Stock Exchange of India, compared with the issue price of 590 rupees. India’s benchmark Nifty was trading 0.06% higher.
The $960 million IPO was India’s second-largest this year, behind SBI Funds Management’s listing in July.
Temasek-backed Manipal Health, which operates more than 13,000 beds across 49 hospitals, is betting on rapidly growing demand for specialised healthcare options, which analysts say will form the bedrock of growth in the Indian healthcare market. The sector is booming with increasing private and foreign investments from the likes of Blackstone, Novo Nordisk and KKR.
The strong listing reflects healthy investor demand, but its premium valuation leaves limited upside in the near term, said Shivani Nyati, head of wealth at Swastika Investmart.
“Investors who received the allotment can continue to hold the stock, while fresh investors should wait for better entry levels or signs of further debt reduction before buying,” Nyati said.
Apollo Hospitals, Manipal Health’s closest listed rival with a market capitalisation of around 1.3 trillion rupees, has nearly 10,000 beds and aims to expand its capacity to 13,000 beds by fiscal 2030.
Max Healthcare and Fortis Healthcare have a market cap of 1.04 trillion rupees and 704.22 billion rupees, respectively.
Manipal Health plans to spend 40 billion rupees to increase its bed capacity by over 18% in the next few years, adding 2,400 beds within three to four years.
The company is valued at 84.65 times its fiscal 2026 earnings at the upper end of the IPO price band of 560 rupees to 590 rupees, brokerage Angel One said in a note. Apollo, Fortis and Max Healthcare are valued between 66.15x and 74.55x.
($1 = 94.9725 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Urvi Dugar, Surbhi Misra and Vivek Kumar M in Bengaluru; Editing by Janane Venkatraman, Sonia Cheema and Mrigank Dhaniwala)
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