LIC to consider dividend at Q4 financial results on May 30

Days after launching its much-awaited initial public offering (IPO), the board of directors of insurance giant Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has said that it'll consider and approve the audited annual financial results for the quarter ending March 31, 2022, and payment of dividend on May 30, 2022.

Accordingly, the trading window for dealing in shares of the corporation will remain closed from May 17, 2022, till 48 hours after the board meeting for consideration and approval of financial results for Q4 FY22, the company says in a stock exchange filing.

In the previous quarter, LIC had recorded ₹234.9 crore profit as compared to ₹90 lakh profit during the same quarter a year earlier. LIC's first-year premium during Q3 FY22 was ₹8,748.55 crore vs ₹7,9757.37 cr during the same quarter last year. The renewal premium for the said quarter was ₹56,822.49 crore, a growth from ₹65,986.72 crore during the quarter a year ago.

The LIC shares are trading 1.14% or 9.40 points up at ₹826.5 on the National Stock Exchange today. The shares declined 60.05 points or 6.77% in the past five days. Since its listing on May 17, the LIC stock has fallen 5.51% or 48.25 points. They fell nearly 8% and lost over ₹46,000 crore of value on its first day of trading itself, after making a tepid start on Dalal Street.

The market capitalisation of the insurance behemoth has also dropped to ₹5.22 lakh crore against around ₹6 lakh crore at the issue price. LIC had raised ₹20,557 crore in the country’s biggest-ever IPO, but the company failed to provide listing gains to the investors on Dalal Street amid weak global trends.

Despite a lukewarm response on the stock market, LIC of India had become the fifth biggest listed firm in terms of market capitalisation, bigger than Hindustan Unilever, ICICI Bank, SBI, HDFC, and Bharti Airtel.

As per today's share price, LIC's current m-cap has slipped one point to be the sixth-largest company in India. As per today's share price, companies like RIL (₹17.7 lakh crore), TCS (₹12.07 lakh crore), HDFC Bank (₹7.3 lakh crore), Infosys (6.08 lakh crore) and Hindustan Unilever (₹5.45 lakh crore) command more market cap than LIC.

LIC's m-cap, however, exceeds the combined m-cap of the top five listed insurance companies, including SBI Life Insurance, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, Star Health and Allied Insurance Company, and Max Financial Service.

The LIC IPO was oversubscribed 2.95 times. The policyholder portion of the IPO was subscribed 6.11 times, while the portion reserved for employees was subscribed 4.39 times. Retail investors bid 1.99 times the allocated bucket, and non-institutional investors’ portion was subscribed 2.91 times. The issue raised ₹43,933 crore demand against the intended offer size of ₹21,000 crore.

Despite the mega demand for the IPO, the issue also topped the charts in terms of bogus IPO subscriptions, Fortune India had reported earlier. As per the report, a whopping 20 lakh applications made towards the LIC IPO either defaulted on payment or were incorrectly filed. Of these, around 28% of applications received were rejected, a record high for an IPO. Also, 34.5% of applications received from LIC policyholders were rejected.