Three top candian funds, including Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ), and leading local insurers such as Life Insurance Corp and HDFC Life are among the frontline investors likely to buy into the infrastructure investment trust (InvIT) of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
About 35% of the InvIT’s corpus could be the combined share of Indian life insurers. The InvIT’s sponsor, NHAI, is likely to own the rest. India’s biggest superannuation funds manager, the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO), is also said to have been approached for an investment into the InvIT’s units. EPFO has an estimated corpus exceeding ₹12 lakh crore. Several top mutual funds have also been approached to buy into units of the InvIT.
CPPIB, OTTP and CDPQ declined to comment, while mails sent to other potential investors remained unanswered.
SBI Capital, ICICI Securities and Kotak Securities are among the managers running the book building process.
This will be the second InvIT in the country to be floated by a public sector company after PowerGrid Corp (PGC) raised about ₹3,480 crore in April.
Badrish Kulhalli, fixed income head at HDFC Life Insurance said that “We have seen the PGC InvIT where transmission assets have been monetised."
Further he added "NHAI also expected to monetise its investment in road assets, which should register strong growth in traffic as well as revenues."
Ratings company CARE gave a provisional triple-A (AAA) grade to the National Highway Infra Trust (NHIT) in April.
NHIT will reportedly hold the five identified toll road assets of 390 km through a project SPV, National Highway Infra Projects Pvt Ltd. It will enter into a 30 year concession agreement with NHAI to operate the road assets under the toll operate transfer mode.