IOC’s board clears Rs 22k cr rights issue

NEW DELHI: The IndianOil board on Friday approved a rights issue for raising Rs 22,000 crore and forming an equal joint venture with Singapore-based Sun Mobility Pte Ltd with equity investment of Rs 1,800 crore till 2026-27 on electric mobility initiatives.
The company board also approved investment of a little more than $78 million in its Singapore subsidiary, 10CL Singapore Pte. Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of IndianOQil, for acquiring preference shares and warrants, IndianOil informed the stock exchanges in the evening.
“The details of rights issue viz. the issue price, right entitlement, record date, issue open date, issue closure dates, terms of payment etc., will be intimated separately in accordance with the applicable laws, and subject to receipt of necessary approvals as may be required,” the company said without identifying the projects that will funded with the money raised through this route.
The joint venture with Sun Mobility will focus on battery swapping business and other initiatives such as retrofitting and developing an aggregator eco system to promote electric mobility. These are part of a four-year-old initiative undertaken before the company announced its 2046 net zero roadmap.

Sun Mobility is promoted by

Chetan Maini

and

Uday

Khemka of the India-based Sun Group. Swiss-based Dutch energy and commodity trading house Vitol and German engineering giant Bosch have investors in the company since two and three years, respectively.
IndianOil is the second state-run refiner-retailer to announce rights issue. The Bharat Petroleum board had on June 28 approved a similar plan to raise Rs 18,000 crore for funding energy transition projects.

The Union Budget for 2023-24 had made a provision of Rs 30,000 crore as capital support for energy transition projects of IndianOil, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum.
IndianOil had recently doubled its authorised capital to Rs 30,000 crore. Industry watchers said higher equity capital will boost boost capital spending of the oil companies and credibility of their carbon reduction plans.