Robi’s IPO lottery to be held on Thursday

The lottery for the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Robi, the country's second largest telecommunications service provider, will be held on Thursday.

The company said in a statement that the lottery will begin at 10:30am on a digital platform.

The statement also said that applications for Robi's shares have been oversubscribed by 5.74 times against the public offering of Tk387.74 crore.

Around 12.8 lakh general investors have applied for Robi's IPO shares, according to brokerage house sources.

Robi IPO subscription began on 17 November and continued till 23 November.

The company will raise Tk524 crore through the IPO – with Tk388 crore from external investors and Tk136 crore from its own people under the Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP).

Around 1.3 lakh new Beneficiary Owner (BO) accounts were opened in November ahead of the IPO subscription of Robi.

Meanwhile, the company reported a 33% decline in net profit in the third quarter compared to the previous period this year.

However, the operator registered 9.7% growth in revenue during the time.

Robi claimed that the profit figure would have looked far more appealing had it not paid a 77.06% effective tax rate with the 2% minimum turnover tax during the time.

Mahtab Uddin Ahmed, managing director and chief executive officer of Robi, alleged that they are being treated with a discriminatory taxation system as the market leader Grameenphone, also listed on the capital market, pays just 40-45% tax.

He commented this at a press meet organised to disclose Robi's financial results for the third quarter.

At the press meet, Robi officials said that the operator ended the third quarter of this year with a profit of Tk38.9 crore while its revenue for the time reached Tk1,934 crore.

In the first nine months – from January through September – of this year, Robi's total revenue reached Tk5,644 crore, 1% up from the revenue compared to the same period of last year.

Robi has 30% of the country's total mobile subscribers.