The company is part of the 106-year-old JM Group which operates container terminals, container freight stations and inland container depots. It also offers shipping agency services.
“Somewhere around the end of June is when we plan to file our DRHP (draft red herring prospectus) with the Securities and Exchange Board of India,” Kotak told ET. “Depending on approvals, we would aim to hit the markets sometime around the end of the year,” he added.
The company, backed by Bain Capital, plans to use the money to fund brownfield port projects it would bid for as well as for acquisitions, said Kotak. He added that Bain would take a partial exit through the share issue, but would stay invested in the company.
The IPO will be managed by
Capital, Axis Cap, Bank of America Securities and Credit Suisse.
Kotak said the shipping ministry has 30 projects to be bid out on the build, operate, transfer basis, which is a contract spanning a few decades within which a company gets the licence to develop and expand the facility by building new terminals and other facilities. Of the total pipeline of ₹20,000 crore worth of projects, JM Baxi aims to bid for projects worth up to ₹5,000 crore in the next few years.
Those include projects at the Tuticorin port and Nava Sheva, or the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust. Kotak said the company is looking for acquisitions in the logistics space too.
“Approaching the capital markets for funds is always need based. You have to need the capital for a certain specific function. And we need that capital to be able to try and meet some of these growth opportunities that we see in front of ourselves in our sector,” said Kotak.
“I think we’re at an inflection point where we do need to add more capacity to service our customers, to make sure we scale along with them to meet their logistics requirements to meet their end to end supply chain requirements. And obviously, if we need the capital, we need to tap the market,” he added.
JM Baxi in March agreed to acquire units of two logistics companies for ₹200 crore. It bought heavy machinery moving business of logistics major
. It also agreed to buy a unit of Lift and Shift Private Limited that moves heavy equipment and components to locations where large infrastructure or manufacturing projects are being set up such as petrochemical plants.
