Videocon confident of a successful rights issue

Consumer non-durables have shown a 30% growth, 29.9% actually in the month of February this comes on top of a 31% growth in January as well. How is business at Videocon Industries? Is it maintaining the strength in March and do you see the current quarter as good as the Q4 as well? A: We have been seeing that in March there was a tremendous growth in the sales of consumer durables, especially in television sets (TV) because of Indian Premier League (IPL) etc and now for fridge, air-conditioners etc and so there was good growth in March. In February, as you said 30% Index of Industrial Production (IIP) was expected because Indian economy is growing almost at 10% and three times of consumer durable growth should be there. Year-on-year it is only 6% but 30% growth is a good growth. December also we had similar growth of around 26-27% and we hope the financial year also to complete with average 30% growth of consumer durables. Q: Your rights issue is closing today and it was priced at Rs 225 per share, which is not at significant discount to market price, and analyst believe that rights issue will not be subscribed. You are planning to raise about Rs 1,160 crore. Do you think most of the money will now from promoters only and how much promoter stake would go up by that? A: No, it’s not like that. Promoters will be giving only their stakes and pubic is suppose to give their stake. Generally, we should not bother about what are the prices etc. We believe on our company’s strength and we believe that right will be subscribed by the public at large. In fact, there is oversubscription or extra shares are also coming from most of our shareholders. Q: Can you confirm that the rights issue has been fully subscribed? A: I cannot say that. But what results that so far I have seen that it has got tremendous response and it will be closing today. Q: So you would have some idea of how much more promoters may put in, anything like that. Would you have some idea of how much the promoter’s stake could up by? A: I do not think promoters will require putting money, it will be subscribed and you will be getting this result by today 3 pm. Q: There is very strong talk that you are looking at taking over the Phillips’ consumer division as well, any inorganic moves with respect to Philips? A: We have good relation with Phillips. We have purchased their Kolkata factory and we have been supplying products to them since long time, so there has been good interest by Phillips in us but so far no agreement has been done but Phillips and Videocon for design and technology always go together. Q: We can expect some more factory or other purchases of Phillips units by Videocon sometime very soon? A: You can always have inference but I cannot talk because of non-disclosure agreement which we have with Phillips.