In a significant development, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said on Tuesday that it has successfully concluded fund-raising through InvIT Round-3 for national highway (NH) stretches, raising more than ₹16,000 crore.
The monetisation exercise is the largest by the highways development agency and one of the largest in the domestic roads sector, NHAI said.
The National Highways Infra Trust (NHIT), NHAI’s infrastructure investment trust, concluded the fund-raising through Round-3 for NH stretches of 889 km at an enterprise value of over ₹16,000 crore. A Letter of Acceptance (LoA) to raise the highest ever concession value through ’InvIT Round-3’ was issued in February 2024, it added.
Strong demand
In the third monetisation round, NHIT raised unit capital of around ₹7,272 crore from marquee domestic and international investors and debt of around ₹9,000 crore from Indian lenders to fund the acquisition of NH stretches at a base concession fee of around ₹15,625 crore and additional concessional fees of ₹75 crore.
The units were subscribed by investors through a book-build process at a cut-off price of ₹124.14 per unit, at a premium over the current NAV of ₹122.86 per unit.
The units witnessed strong demand from both existing and new investors, including foreign pension funds such as the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board, which are existing unit holders and subscribed to a maximum limit of 25 per cent each.
Besides, other investors included domestic pension and provident funds (IoCL Employees PF, L&T Staff PF, Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Karamchari Pension Fund, SBI Pension, etc.), insurance companies (Tata AIG, SBI Life, HDFC Life), mutual funds (SBI, Nippon India), banks, and a few others.
NHAI also subscribed to its share of around 15 per cent of the units at the same price.
With the completion of the third round of monetisation, the total realised value of all three rounds of InvIT stands at ₹26,125 crore and holds a diversified portfolio of fifteen operating toll roads with an aggregate length of about 1,525 km spread across Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.