Jio Platforms shares trade at 22% premium in grey market ahead of IPO debut

For investors lucky enough to land shares in Jio Platforms Ltd.’s $3.1 billion India-record initial public offering, trading on the unofficial market is fueling hopes of a big debut pop. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s digital and telecommunications giant has attracted stellar demand across investor categories ahead of its Oct. 28 market debut. Investors who got their allocations on Tuesday are now closely watching Jio’s gray-market pricing for clues about how the first day might unfold.

The premium over the IPO price has hovered at about 22% for roughly 10 days, unusually resilient for an offering of this size, according to the ipowatch.in and investorgain.com platforms. Gray market premiums are unregulated and provide no guarantee of where a stock will actually trade once it hits the exchange. Still, they are widely tracked in India as a barometer of demand and listing-day sentiment.

If the pattern holds into the listing, it would make Jio India’s second-most valuable company after parent Reliance Industries Ltd., pushing rival Bharti Airtel Ltd. into third place. That prospect is adding to the excitement around an IPO that’s already rewritten records in India’s capital markets. Jio attracted more than $78 billion in bids and nearly 14 million applications in one of the country’s most anticipated listings.

So far, Jio has been able to defy the usual trend of gray market premiums cooling after an IPO closes, as the initial rush of bidding fades and investors shift their focus to allotments and the eventual listing. After National Stock Exchange of India Ltd.’s $2.4 billion IPO, the premium gradually eroded from about 15% to 3% in two weeks and the shares ultimately made a relatively muted debut.The optimism is backed by blockbuster subscription numbers. Jio’s IPO was subscribed more than 22 times, with qualified institutional buyers bidding for 71 times the shares reserved for them.

Wealthy investors subscribed 14 times their allocation, while the retail portion was covered 2.7 times. The offering was fully subscribed within just 100 minutes of opening last week, even as a bruising selloff swept through Indian equities.