Adani Enterprises files for Rs 20,000-crore follow-on public offer

Richest Indian Gautam Adani-led group's flagship firm on Wednesday filed an offer letter with stock exchanges for a proposed Rs 20,000 crore follow-on public offer (FPO).

The FPO of Adani Enterprises Ltd (AEL) is planned to open on January 27 and close on January 31, according to the offer letter.

Of the Rs 20,000 crore proceeds of the FPO, Rs 10,869 crore will be used for green hydrogen projects, work at the existing airports and construction of a greenfield expressway. Another Rs 4,165 crore will go towards repayment of debt taken by its airports, road and solar project subsidiaries.

Adani, 60, started off as a trader and has been on a rapid diversification spree, expanding an empire centered on ports and coal mining to include airports, data centers and cement as well as green energy. And AEL is the vehicle for most of the new business expansion.

AEL is India's largest listed business incubator and breeds businesses in four core industry sectors - energy and utility, transportation and logistics, consumer, and primary industry.

"We have, over the years, seeded new business interests for the Adani group, developed them into sizeable and self-sustaining business verticals and subsequently demerged them into independently listed and scalable platforms," it said.

Its current business portfolio includes a green hydrogen ecosystem, data centers, developing airports, developing roads, food FMCG, digital, mining, defence and industrial manufacturing, among others.

The company is tapping industry opportunities, such as green hydrogen, the aviation sector and data centers.

"We are setting up a green hydrogen ecosystem with an objective to incubate, build and develop an end-to-end integrated ecosystem for the manufacture of green hydrogen," it said.

This ecosystem includes manufacturing renewable energy equipment such as wind and solar modules to reduce cost of renewable power, production of renewable energy and green hydrogen itself, and transformation of a part of the green hydrogen produced into derivatives, including green nitrogenous fertilizers, ammonia and urea, both for the domestic market and exports, it added.

AEL operates and manages seven operational airports across the cities of Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Mangaluru, Jaipur, Guwahati and Thiruvananthapuram, and one greenfield airport in Navi Mumbai. It is also developing infrastructure projects such as roads in India.

It had previously announced plans to invest USD 50 billion over the next 10 years in the green hydrogen ecosystem for the production of up to 3 million tonne of green hydrogen. Also, it plans to expand its solar module manufacturing capabilities at Mundra SEZ in Gujarat to up to 10 GW per annum.

As of September 30, 2022, it had Rs 40,023.50 crore in borrowings.