The initial public offering of Ahmedabad based agrochemical company Dharmaj Crop Guard has opened for public subscription on Monday, 28 November 2022.The IPO will remain open for public subscription for three days and will conclude on Wednesday, 30 November 2022.

Investors can bid for a minimum of 60 shares and multiples of 60 equity shares after that.The public issue of Dharmaj Crop Guard comprises a fresh issue of Rs 216 crore and an offer-for-sale (OFS) of up to 1.48 million equity shares by existing shareholders.

Retail investors can apply for a minimum of Rs 14,220 worth of shares and the maximum would be Rs 1,99,080 for 14 lots.

Half of the offer is reserved for qualified institutional buyers, 15 percent for non-institutional investors and the remaining 35 percent for retail investors.

It opened for public subscription at 10 am and was subscribed around 60 per cent by 12:57 pm on the first day of bidding.

It received total bids for 48,14,280 shares across both the stock exchanges against 80,12,990 shares on offer, data from National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed.

 Company profile

Dharmaj Crop is an agrochemical company engaged in the business of manufacturing, distributing, and marketing a range of agro-chemical formulations such as insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, plant-growth regulator, micro fertilizers and antibiotic to B2C and B2B customers.

The company exports to more than 25 countries in Latin America, East Africa, the Middle East and Far East Asia.

It has 464 registrations for agrochemical formulations from the Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee (CIB&RC), of which 269 agrochemical formulations are for sale in India as well as abroad and 195 are exclusively for exports.

It has also applied for registrations of 18 agrochemical formulations and 17 agrochemical technicals. It has 157 trademark registrations.

Dharmaj has a manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad with an installed capacity of 25,500 MT for agro-chemical formulations.

The company sells its branded products in 17 states through 4,362 dealers. As of September 2022, it had more than 154 institutional products sold to more than 600 customers. Some of its key customers include Atul, Heranba Industries, Innovative Agritech, Meghmani Industries, Bharat Rasayan, Oasis, United Insecticides, and Sadik Agrochemicals.

Dharmaj Crop’s profit grew 37 percent in FY22 at Rs 28.69 crore from the previous year.

The operating revenue for the year ended March 2022 grew by 30 percent to Rs 394.2 crore from the previous year and growth in FY21 was 53 percent, primarily due to an increase in sales of branded products, institutional sales and the addition of more dealers and customers.

Even at operating level, EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) surged 42.4 percent to Rs 44.3 crore in FY22 and the the same in FY21 increased by 74 percent compared to FY20.

The margin, too, has been expanding at 11.2 percent in FY22 against 10.3 percent in FY21 and 9 percent in FY20.

For the four months period ended July FY23, the profit was Rs 18.4 crore on revenue of Rs 220.9 crore with the EBITDA margin at 12.2 percent.