How I can place auction order to buy disinvestment shares like SAIL, ONGC

Government is planning to disinvestment PSU stocks lie SAIL (guess this is already over), ONGC and couple of others. How can I bid/auction to buy these shares? Please help

Here is something that is well written about OFS/FPO on Onemint. 

What is Offer for Sale and can retail investors participate in the process?

Offer for Sale (OFS) is another form of share sale, very much similar to Follow-On Public Offer (FPO). OFS mechanism facilitates the promoters of an already listed company to sell or dilute their existing shareholdings through an exchange based bidding platform.

Except the promoters of the company, all market participants like individuals, mutual funds, foreign institutional investors (FIIs), insurance companies, corporates, other qualified institutional bidders (QIBs), HUFs etc. can bid/participate in the OFS process or buy the shares. The promoters of the company can only participate as the sellers in the process.

OFS Process

First of all, very basic, you need to compulsorily have a demat/trading account(s) and permanent account number (PAN) to participate in an Offer for Sale. The sellers are required to deposit the offered shares with the exchange before 11.00 a.m. on T1 day, where T is the day of OFS.

Once the OFS starts, you can participate in the process yourself using your online trading accounts like ICICI Direct, Kotak Securities etc. by placing your bids under the OFS section of their respective broking websites.

Investors, who do not have online trading accounts, can place their bids by directing the dealer of their broking company to do it on their behalf. You can modify or cancel your bids during the offer timings except in the last 60 minutes i.e. till 2:30 p.m.

The exchange will announce the Indicative Price only during the last 60 minutes of the OFS. Indicative Price is the volume weighted average price of all the valid/confirmed bids. e.g. There are total 1000 shares in an offer for sale with Rs. 200 as the floor price. If the investors bid for 200 shares at Rs. 210 and 800 shares at Rs. 200, the indicative price for the offer would be [(200*210)+(800*200)]/1000 = Rs. 202.

No leverage is provided to the investors against the stock margin available in the trading accounts and thus, they are required to deposit 100% of the order value in cash to bid for it. Also, the funds allocated for OFS cannot be utilised for other investment purposes or against any other obligation of the trading member.

Once the bidding gets over, allotment price is fixed and allocation is done. The successful bidders will be allotted shares directly into their demat account on T+1 basis the very next day. In case of partial allotment or no allotment, the refunds will be made on the same day itself. This makes the OFS process really fast, just like buying shares of the company from the open market.

During the offer timings or once the offer gets completed, you can monitor the quantity and price of bids received etc. from this link of NSE, like it has the details of the OFS of Eros International Media Limited which got concluded on December 20th.

Allocation Methodology and Contract Notes

The companies can adopt one of the two methodologies for allocating the shares on offer i.e. either on a price-priority basis at multiple clearing prices or on a proportionate basis at a single clearing price.

Like you get the contract notes by the evening of the trading day on which you buy shares of a company, you'll get a contract note in the same format when you buy shares in an OFS. Contract note will have the details of your bid price and the quantity allotted in the specified format.

What differentiates Offer for Sale (OFS) process from IPOs/FPOs?

Physical Application: Unlike IPOs/FPOs, no physical application forms are issued to apply for shares in the OFS process. OFS process is completely platform based.

Time Period: While IPOs/FPOs remain open for 3-4 days, OFS gets over in a single trading day as the markets gets closed for trading at 3:30 p.m.

Price Band: Under IPOs/FPOs, there is a price band in which the investors need to bid for the shares or simply give their consent to buy the shares at the Cut-Off price. With OFS, there is a Floor Price. As the name suggests, it is the minimum price at which you can bid for the shares under OFS. You will not be able to place an order below the floor price as it will not be accepted by the system.

Though it is not mandatory to disclose the floor price before the issue opens, the promoters usually disclose it prior to the share sale in almost all of the issues. Alternatively, the promoters can submit the floor price in a sealed envelope to the exchange which will be disclosed post closure of the offer. In case the floor price is not disclosed to the public, the investors can place their bids at any price they want.

Charges: Investors are not required to pay any kind of charges over and above the Fixed Price in an IPO or FPO. But, the OFS process involve certain transaction charges including the brokerage, Securities Transaction Tax (STT) and other charges, which the investors normally pay when they buy shares of a company in the cash market.

On the OFS day, normal trading in the shares of the company will continue even when the bidding process is ON. The investors have the option to either buy the shares of the company in the normal market or place their bids for the shares on sale in the OFS. The investors can place only Limit orders under the OFS facility as Market orders are not allowed.

OFS process has the following advantages over FPOs/IPOs:

Cost effective: I think this is the biggest reason for the promoters to sell their stake through the OFS route. OFS route involves very less formalities. Unlike IPOs/FPOs, the promoters of the issue under OFS are not required to file Draft Red Herring Prospectus (DRHP). Also, there is no need to get the application forms printed. It also saves big advertisement expenses.

Saves Time: This route involves sale of shares in a single trading day and that too, during the normal trading hours i.e. between 9:15 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. The promoters can announce their intention of share sale even one trading day prior to the opening of the offer.

Transparency: Retail investors have suffered losses in the past due to manipulation in IPO/FPO allotment. OFS process is quite transparent as it is done on real-time basis with a system based bidding platform and involves least amount of paperwork.

Multiple Orders: Under OFS, there is no restriction on number of bids from a single buyer. This facility is not available in FPOs/IPOs.

The formats are changing rapidly. One-day cricket is fast losing its appeal to T-20 matches. Similarly, 3-4 days long FPOs are getting replaced by these single-trading day Offers for Sale. Very few people read the DRHP or printed details on application forms while investing. So, in a way, these OFS will reduce the issue costs to a large extent. But, will the investors be able to make wise investment decisions in these OFS? Just wait and watch.

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How much does it take to get shares credited in to DEMAT after applying?

In case of OFS, most of the traders change the price at the last moment at around 3:28-3:30 so as to get the allotment at the optimum price.

In case of recent coal india OFS, a retail investor could easily made 2-3 percent by getting shares in OFS and shorting in future. I failed to execute it as the price to bid in OFS is dependent on demand which is clear only around 3:25-3:28.

Keeping 2:30 as the cutoff when the exchange and other brokers cutoff at 3:30 is of no use. (I am now feeling bad about closing my other brokerage account )

Request Nithin or Nikhil to please look into it and allow users to put bid till 3:30.

I have received contact note for ongc OFS. It mentions that shares will be credited in 2 days. Was it always like this or the rule has changed. From what I remember a couple of years back when bharat Dynamic came with OFS, the shares were shown in kite the immediate next day and were available for sale.

Can somebody clarify this??

For those who got the allotment, shares won’t show in T1 (today) because of the Settlement holiday, hence it is expected to be reflected in Kite on 4th April (Monday)

Otherwise, it used to be on the next immediate trading day.

Others - Please Correct me if my understanding is wrong

Oh okay. So this is the reason. Makes sense.

I feel stupid now. I took a chance of 4 rupees difference from ofs price and yesterday’s closing. Now i am exposed to price changes today. Anyways lesson learnt.

Its getting reflected today. :+1:

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is there any rule how much stake promoter can sell via OFS?