Private equity firms continue to use buoyant market sentiments to exit their old investments via public market sales route. Carlyle Group has made a full exit from Repco Home Finance, a housing finance company based in Chennai, thereby making over nine-fold returns in little over six and half years.
First Carlyle Growth VI fund that held 17.74% stake or nearly 11.03 million shares in the company (at the end of June 2014) on Thursday sold entire stake for total consideration of R471.43 crore. The transaction took place at a price of R427.50 per share through a bulk deal on NSE.
Carlyle Group has been one of the most successful investors in India having made quite a profitable exits on regular basis in last six months. Carlyle had in first quarter of 2014 exited from Tirumala Milk Products and Cyberoam for $72 million and $ 70 million, respectively.
Carlye Group, a global private equity firm with assets under management of over $199 billion had invested nearly R108.57 crore in Repco Home Finance during 2007-09, with Carlyle Asia Growth Fund picking up nearly 49.7% stake at an average buy price of R46.85 a piece. In January 2013, two months before Repco came with an IPO, it sold 13.33% pre-IPO stake to Wolfensohn Capital Partners at a price of around R172 a piece getting over 3.7 times returns in that deal.
This exit is the second biggest PE exit through public market route so far this calendar year. Last month, another global major PE fund Bain Capital had partly left its investment in Hero Motocorp for R1,481.2 crore. Other big exits in this calendar year include 3i Capital leaving Adani Power (R347.11 crore) and Great Pacific Capital selling shares in Edelweiss Capital for R220 crore.
