NOVEL ONLINE FREE Chapter 660 Listing!! (2/2)
City square, Mangaluru stock exchange [MSE]
"I feel like Himalayan Group is bound to win it big."
"I agree, but Mahabali Enterprises is no pushover either."
"Hey, have you seen the financial data of Aryugam Furniture in the last financial year? 30% of their income has been from foreign export. Isn't it amazing? I feel like it will be a dark horse."
"No, the real dark horse is Dashamuni Pvt. Ltd. From the data I have read, they have been dominating the detergent market in several states of the empire, and their exports are constantly rising. It is stated that they are listing the company in order to expand their scale. I am very confident in this company."
The city square was rowdy and noisy, with various people talking among each other enthusiastically, discussing which stock would perform best.
The financial data of all the companies that are being listed today were made public through the newspaper and through the free pamphlets that can be obtained at any major branch of the banks in the empire.
"Hey, there is someone up there," a student rubbed his eyes vigorously, fearing that he was mistaken because he felt like he could see people on top of the stock exchange building.
The crowd soon noticed the anomaly and quickly cast their gaze towards the top.
"GOD! It's His Majesty!"
Someone screamed.
Everyone suddenly became enthusiastic.
"Your Majesty!"
"Your Majesty!"
People soon began to cheer loudly, and the excitement was getting out of control, but fortunately, the police soon took immediate measures and calmed everyone down.
Vijay knew that something like this was going to happen, but he could not stay out of the first day of operations of the stock exchange, especially since his dynasty corporation would also be listed on the stock exchange.
The staff of the stock exchange, who stood below on top of small podiums, soon raised the slates in their hands, which contained basic instructions.
"[MBE] Mahabali Enterprises IPO"
"Initial valuation: 800 million Varaha"
"Initial public offering: 20%"
"200,000 shares at 800 Varaha per share"
Discussions soon broke out among the crowd as everyone began to discuss the pros and cons of investing.
In the corner of the crowd, a male student looked confused. "Wasn't Southern Conglomerate i.e. Mahabali Enterprises only bought for 531,000,000 Varaha at the auction? Why is its valuation so high now?"
A female student was about to explain the reason when suddenly a laugh was heard.
"Haha, kid, it looks like your university teaches you only so and so. You don't even know the basic knowledge," there was a hint of disdain in his tone.
The girl looked at the man accusatorily. Being looked at like this, the man soon became embarrassed. It's just that he couldn't stop himself from ridiculing the young boy, It was like an itch he couldn't leave alone.
In fact, he had tried to get his son into BIT University, but unfortunately, he couldn't, so he was a little unhappy with the BIT universities for not budging an inch, even after he promised rich donations.
"Um, how do I say this? When the conglomerates were bought, they were actually sold by the government at a very friendly price by only calculating its physical assets and not counting the technologies, sales channels, and market demand. What's more, the government only sold 80% of the stake, while the remaining 20% was given away on the condition that the conglomerates would be listed."
"I even heard a recent rumour that when privatization happened and the businessmen took over the operations, the company still had a lot of raw materials in stock and had a lot of unused funds in the accounts, enough to run the conglomerate without any capital investment for half a year."
"So after calculating the valuation properly, I would say 800 million is not too much. In fact, it could even be cheap, since each factory of Mahabali Enterprises, even the small-scale ones, is worth more than 3.5 million Varaha, especially since they hold land rights in the prime real estate on the banks of the Kauvery River and its tributaries, unlike now, where they are valued at merely 2.9 million Varaha."
The male student was enlightened. He suddenly looked at the man with a different light. Although he felt unhappy about being looked down upon, he was still impressed by the insight the man had. "Thank you, sir."
Receiving such sincere gratitude, the man became embarrassed once again. "Yeh."
Soon people began to rush to the booth of the brokers.
Vijay, on top of the building, could feel the excitement of the people, so he did not hesitate anymore. He took the hammer in his hands and handed it over to Ramayya Senapati and Aditya Bhonsle, the nominated heads of Mahabali Enterprises.
Ramayya and Aditya were both very excited. They had already been informed about what they should do, so without any hesitation, they swung the hammer loudly.
"DONG!"
The noise from below momentarily became silent. All the attention for an instant was attracted to the top of the building, and soon, in the incredible expressions of all the people, words began to appear on each floor of the six-story building.
It contained the name of the company, Mahabali Enterprises, in its acronym code, [MBE]. Soon, its issued price was written in the second column, along with one-day performance in the third column, one-week performance in the fourth column, and finally, one-year performance in the fifth column.
The people instinctively understood what the words meant.
The smart ones immediately looked at the brokers with a predatory gaze.
"I will buy 4 shares."
"2 shares for me."
"I'll take 10."
"Quickly lock in 15 shares for me."
Historically, all stock exchanges before the modern era only updated their data every few days. This was supposed to be the same for the Bharatiya Empire, but thankfully, it was not, since the empire had an amazing communication infrastructure like the Arkha Dristhi Communication Network. The listing frequency was set at two hours, where a unique trading method was established.
Odd hours of the working day were allowed to trade (1, 3, 5, 7), and the even hours were reserved for processing all the trades done in the last hour (2, 4, 6, 8). So, in an eight-hour workday from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM, four hours were reserved for trading during the odd hours, and four hours were reserved for processing during the even hours.
However, since it was the first day and all the funds would only be invested in 9 different companies, the update time was reduced to only one hour, with half of it reserved for trade and half for processing.
Soon, the half-hour bell rang, and the brokers swiftly placed a sign on their tables reading "Trade Closed." They quickly organized all the receipts and the money they had received, securing them in a locker box. The box was then handed over to dedicated personnel, who rushed it into the stock exchange building. At the same time, the ledger book was also taken inside by them personally to verify the processing and record the data.
Overall verification took place in five different steps, which even involved complicated 4-bit encoding and decoding to provide a unique ID for each transaction. In order for this complicated verification to take place, talents from both business and mathematics were required. On this special occasion, Joseph Oppenheimer had directly employed three different batches of employees to work continuously, while having a few dozen employees in reserve in case something went wrong. Interestingly enough, the amount of personnel required and the level of skill required nearly drained a quarter of all the business talent pool in the state of Vijayanagara. In an emergency, Joseph had to recruit talents from other states and had to call in a few favours to recruit the Jews and the Romani, somehow managing to pull through.
Half an hour passed in the blink of an eye.
The words on top of the building soon began to change. In the "One Day Trade" column, the number 840 was added in green along with an upward arrow with the number 5% written on it.
"Oh my god, it jumped up by 5%!"
"Oh, Lord!"
Soon, there was a commotion in the crowd. The people started to get restless. They eagerly waited for the bell to ring once again so that the trade would be open, and their prayers were answered.
"Dong!"
The stock market was open. This time, the buying was more enthusiastic. The first group of people who had bought the shares became even more eager because each share netted them a 40 Varaha profit, and for those who had bought the shares in bulk, the profit was even more enticing since it was the fastest money they had ever made.
In the meantime, the people who stood still couldn't help but lament, "I wish the issuing price was a bit lower. 800 Varaha per share is a little out of my affordable range."
"Don't worry, brother, 9 different companies are yet to be listed, we will get the opportunity."
Unknown to them, their opportunity came quicker than expected because Vijay got on top of the tower for the second time. This time, it was along with Raja Jayadwaj Singha, Rajakiran Poojari, Raja Yogendra Singh, and Raja Sarvesh Ranavikrama.
Instructions were soon forwarded.
"[HLG] Himalayan Group IPO"
"Initial valuation: 720 million Varaha"
"Initial public offering: 20%"
"500,000 shares at 288 Varaha per share"
It was like sprinkling salt into boiling oil; the atmosphere exploded.
Due to the lower pricing per share, more people began to get involved.
By the end of the second trading hour, the valuation of the Himalayan Group increased from 720 million to 741.6 million, increasing by 3% and earning around 8 Varaha per share.
The excitement grew even more. Although the profit was not as large as that of Mahabali Enterprises, it was still considered a good performance since, unlike Mahabali Enterprises, Himalayan Group did not have a home-ground advantage, so to speak.
By the 3rd hour, there was another IPO.
"[DC] Dynasty Corporation IPO"
"Initial valuation: 760 million Varaha"
"Initial public offering: 20%"
"10,000 shares at 15,200 Varaha per share"
The valuation of Dynasty Corporation was done according to Vijay's method, only taking the asset value held by the company and listing 20% of its stake in 10,000 shares.
In fact, the number of shares was very low, but Vijay did it deliberately in order to create a feeling of scarcity and premiums in the market, as well as to gain a reputation for the stock in order for it to become the precursor to the bonds. What's more, he really had no incentive to make Dynasty Corporation public apart from lowering the financial burden on him, which, honestly speaking, he was not really burdened by.
Vijay could do it since he holds 80% of the company in his own hands, while in both Mahabali Enterprises and Himalayan Group, there is not even a single shareholder with more than 10% equity. Hence, the biggest goal of Mahabali Enterprises and Himalayan Group has always been higher market capitalization.
As expected, the number of buyers of Dynasty Corporation shares dwarfed in comparison to Himalayan Group and Mahabali Enterprises. The increase in percentage was only 2%, but considering that each share was worth 15,200 Varaha, the profit brought to the shareholders was massive, as each share netted at least 304 Varaha.
By the end of the day, 6 more companies went public, sometimes two at a time.
" Arogyam furniture IPO "
" initial valuation 20 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 10% "
" 200,000 shares at 2 Varaha per share "
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" Dashamuni Pvt Ltd IPO "
" initial valuation 35 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 10% "
" 80,000 shares at 34 Varaha per share "
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" Aararsh Carrages& co IPO "
" initial valuation 120 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 20% "
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" 100,000 shares at 240 Varaha per share "
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" Frontier construction firm IPO "
" initial valuation 20 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 10% "
" 50,000 shares at 40 Varaha per share "
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" Kombu Minerals IPO "
" initial valuation 48 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 12% "
" 150,000 shares at 38 Varaha per share "
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" Joshi Silks IPO "
" initial valuation 32 million Varaha "
" Initial public offering 15% "
" 180,000 shares at 27 Varaha per share "
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By the end of the working day,
Mahabali Enterprises had gone from 800 Varaha per share to 920, an increase of 15%.
Himalayan Group had gone from 280 Varaha per share to 346, an increase of 20%.
Dynasty Corporation had gone from 15,200 Varaha per share to 17,025, an increase of 12%.
Aryogyam Furniture had gone from 2 Varaha per share to 2.3 Varaha, an increase of 11%.
Dashamuni Pvt Ltd had gone from 44 Varaha per share to 53, an increase of 20%.
Akarsh Carriages and Co had gone from 240 Varaha per share to 284, an increase of 18%.
Frontier Construction Firm had gone from 40 Varaha per share to 53, an increase of 32%, becoming the biggest gainer of the first day of trade.
Kombo Minerals went from 38 Varaha per share to 50, an increase of 30%.
Joshi Silks went from 27 per share to 30, an increase of 23%.
In fact, for any company listed in modern times, the number of sub-30% growth would be abnormal, since successful IPOs are measured in ranges of doubling the valuation or even tripling it.
However, it is completely normal for the present Bharatiya Empire for one main reason: all the listed companies are heavy asset industrial enterprises with clear accounts and pricing, so the valuation obtained was pretty reasonable, which made anything above the valuation pure profit for the listed companies. Unlike light industries, whose valuation is hard to gauge, as most of the light industries survive upon word of mouth and branding.