Adani shares tumble over more pledging; Adani Enterprises down 7%

Shares of Adani Total Gas, Adani Power, Adani Transmission, Adani Green Energy, NDTV and Adani Wilmar fell by around 5 per cent each. Adani Enterprises plummeted by 7.03 per cent, Adani Port by 5.25 per cent, Ambuja Cement by 5.17 per cent and ACC Ltd by 3.06 per cent.

Meanwhile, the 30-share Sensex fell 0.41 per cent, or 250.86 points, to close at 60,431.84, and the broader NSE Nifty ended 0.48 per cent, or 85.6 points, down at 17,770.9 on Monday.

According to filings, as many as 75 lakh more shares of Adani Ports have been pledged, taking the total to 1 per cent of all shares with SBICAP. In the case of Adani Green, pledge of 60 lakh more shares took the total to 1.06 per cent. The pledge of 13 lakh more shares of Adani Transmission took the total to 0.55 per cent.

SBICAP Trustee officials said the additional pledge is a top-up of the existing collateral, and no new loan was issued. SBICAP Trustee is a subsidiary of SBI Capital Markets, which is a subsidiary of SBI.

According to Swaminathan J, MD, SBI, as part of the Standby LC facility of $300 million provided for Adani’s Carmichael project in Australia, there is additional collateral by way of pledge of shares of 3 group companies. The required collateral coverage of 140 per cent is reviewed at the end of each month, and any shortfall on MTM must be topped up. There has been a top-up each in June and July 2022, and the third was done on February 8, 2023, after a review on January 31, 2023, he said. SBI Cap Trustee Company is required to file the same with SEBI and comply each time there is a change in the number of shares pledged, SBI said. With this latest tranche, the percentage of shares pledged towards this project aggregates to 1.06 per cent, 1.00 per cent and 0.55 per cent of equity shares of Adani Green, Adani Ports and Adani Transmission, respectively, Swaminathan said.

“It is clarified that such a share pledge is only as additional collateral security over and above the project assets, and no additional finance is extended by SBI against such shares pledged,” SBI said.

“The additional pledge is made by the company to remain compliant to the covenant prescribed for an existing loan which is part of the loans already covered in the total outstanding exposure of the bank,” it added.

Last week, the promoters of the Adani Group prepaid $1.114 billion (around Rs 9,215 crore) to lenders (banks and finance) companies to release pledged shares in Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone Ltd, Adani Green Energy Ltd and Adani Transmission Ltd.

Global index provider MSCI, owned by US-based banking group Morgan Stanley, last week reduced its weightage for four Adani Group stocks in its various widely tracked indexes after reviewing the shares in the free float category, or shares which can be freely traded without any restrictions.

On the other hand, Moody’s Investors Service on Friday revised the outlook on four Adani Group companies to negative from stable, while reaffirming their ratings.

Shares of Adani group companies came under heavy selling pressure on the stock exchanges since January 24, 2023 after a report from New York-based Hindenburg Research alleged “brazen stock manipulation and accounting fraud scheme” over the course of decades by the group.