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(Bloomberg) — Shares of a little-known investment and financial services firm in India soared 70,000-fold this week in one of the biggest moves globally, thanks to a rule tweak by the securities regulator.
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Elcid Investments Ltd.’s thinly-traded shares jumped to 161,023 rupees ($1,915) Monday from 3.53 rupees Friday, dwarfing rallies seen in several penny stocks during the meme stock craze in the US in 2021. The stock has climbed another 54% since then to 248,062.50 on the BSE Ltd.’s stock exchange.
The Mumbai-based company was part of a special price discovery exercise conducted by the stock exchange on Monday. It was undertaken after the Securities and Exchange Board of India in June introduced a mechanism for thinly-traded holding companies so that they could be priced closer to their book value.
The surge made Elcid India’s costliest stock in absolute terms, surpassing MRF Ltd., which is trading at around 122,348 rupees. Even so, Elcid shares remain remain below their book value per share of 406,241.58 rupees as of March 31. The company is better known to local market observers for its stake in India’s largest paints maker Asian Paints Ltd. that’s worth $1 billion — about twice Elcid’s market value.
“Elcid’s jump is the largest single-day advance for any stock” ever in India, said Akshay Chinchalkar, head of research at Axis Securities. “Given the available free float is very limited, we believe liquidity will still remain challenging.”
The astounding surge in Elcid’s stock is even bigger than similar freak rallies seen globally in the past. In 2011, now private Gateway Industries & Associates LLC’s stock rallied 18,800% in a day, while some penny stocks in New York were seeing daily gains of at least 9,900% at the height of retail investor fueled craze in 2021.
In India, Elcid’s spectacular gains are an aberration in a market where the securities regulator caps daily price movements at 20% for stocks that do not have derivatives contracts. The limit, however, does not apply to the special auction.
Incidentally, the discovered price for Elcid’s stock through the special call-auction is similar to the floor price offered by its founders in a failed attempt to take the company private in 2022. The founders, who own a 75% stake in the company, could not get enough minority shareholders to tender shares in the delisting offer.