Jio Financial shares list at Rs 265 on BSE and Rs 262 on NSE. Should you buy, sell or hold?

Jio Financial shares list at Rs 265 on BSE and Rs 262 on NSE. Should you buy, sell or hold?

• By Staff Writer

Shares of Jio Financial Services, which demerged from incubator Reliance Industries last month, on Monday got listed on BSE at a share price of Rs 265. On NSE, the listing price was Rs 262.

Today's listing price was near the exchange-derived price of Rs 261.85 apiece on demerger record date of July 20. It was the first listing from Mukesh Ambani’s camp in the last two decades.

At a market capitalisation of about Rs 1.68 lakh crore, JFSL is already India's 33rd largest listed company and bigger than the likes of HDFC Life Insurance, SBI Life and IndusInd Bank.

Within the NBFC basket, only Bajaj Finance and Bajaj Finserv are larger entities.

"JFSL will go with the India story and the story of being a digital-first institution," JFSL's non-executive chairman KV Kamath said at the listing ceremony held in BSE.

He said there are some advantages to being a little late to the party. "You have the advantage of riding on technological developments which are already visible and then optimising them to the fullest extent," Kamath said, adding that JFSL intends to be a full-service financial sector player.

Minutes after listing, arbitrage traders and RIL investors who aren't comfortable owing the financial stock, which they got as part of the demerger, started booking profits. Amid multiple block deals, JFSL shares hit 5% lower circuit limits on both exchanges.

By virtue of being in the T segment on both exchanges, JFSL shares come with the upper and lower circuit limits of 5% for the first 10 days.

Analysts say the stock could be under selling pressure in the short term as arbitrage traders who bought RIL stock only as a special situation opportunity to get one JFSL share for every RIL stock owned may book profits.

In the meantime, shares of RIL, which have been trading ex-demerger since July 20, fell 1.5% to Rs 2,521.

While maintaining a buy on RIL with a 12-month target price of Rs 3,060, global brokerage firm CLSA had earlier said its India Focus portfolio will exit JFSL at the first 30 minutes weighted average price since they prefer banks.