LG Electronics India IPO attracts $50 billion bids

The $1.3 billion initial public offering (IPO) of LG Electronics India Pvt, a unit of South Korean home appliance maker LG Electronics Inc., closed on October 9, becoming the most subscribed IPO in nearly two decades, Reuters reported, noting that investors rushed to buy a piece of the company in a crowded IPO market.

The LG Electronics India share sale attracted bids worth 4.43 trillion rupees ($49.9 billion) - at the upper end of the company's price range of 1,080-1,140 rupees per share, according to Indian stock exchange data. LG Electronics' offering has become the most oversubscribed in India since Reliance Power's IPO in 2008, said Pranav Haldea, managing director of capital markets data provider PRIME Database.

LG Electronics India had received bids for 3.85 billion shares, or 54.02 times the shares offered, as of Oct. 9. The IPO was fully subscribed within hours of its launch on Oct. 7. The shares are expected to start trading on Oct. 14.

The share sale is the third-largest in India since 2025, after Tata Capital, which closed for subscriptions last week with $2.9 billion in bids, and HDB Financial, which attracted $19 billion in bids before its debut in July.

"Investors seem to have preferred LG Electronics India, where they expect better listing earnings and solid near-term growth prospects due to government tax cuts,” said Prashanth Tapse, senior vice president, research, Mehta Equities.

Other Indian IPOs that have seen substantial subscriptions include HDB Financial Services earlier this year, Eternal in 2021, and Reliance Power in 2008, which attracted around $80 billion in offerings (at current exchange rates).

• LG Electronics India did not issue any new shares

LG Electronics India sold $392 million worth of shares to anchor investors such as BlackRock and investment funds in Singapore and Norway ahead of the IPO. In the share sale, qualified institutional buyers bid 166.5 times the allotted quota, while non-institutional and individual investors subscribed 22.4 times and 3.54 times, respectively. In the IPO, parent company LG Electronics divested a 15% stake. LG Electronics India did not issue new shares in the offering, so existing shares of the parent company were sold.

After initially filing for an IPO in December last year, LG Electronics had targeted a listing by May but postponed the share sale, citing market volatility. LG Electronics, India's second-largest appliance maker, sells products such as refrigerators, washing machines and televisions. The company competes with Whirlpool (US) and Samsung (South Korea) in the domestic market, which is expected to grow by 12% annually through 2029, according to consultancy RedSeer.