Srei Equipment Finance (SEFL), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Srei Infrastructure Finance (Srei), plans an initial public offering (IPO) of its equity shares, resulting in a dilution of up to a maximum of 25% of the post-issue paid-up equity share capital.

SEFL is an industry leader in the infrastructure equipment space, financing every third construction and mining equipment in the country. The company closed the first quarter of this financial year with Rs 234.53 billion of assets under management (AUM), registering a growth of 20.38% over the same quarter of the previous year.

The accelerated growth in the infrastructure space, propelled by the government's substantial budgetary allocation in road, irrigation, mining, railways, ports, affordable housing and other infrastructure sub-sectors, has resulted in significant pick-up in demand for construction and mining equipment.

The budget allocation for the infrastructure sector has been increased to Rs 3,961 billion for 2017-18 from to Rs 2,214 billion in the previous year. The infrastructure equipment sales has shown significant growth in the last financial year and the industry now expects strong growth in equipment sales, including in earth moving, concreting and road making equipment. It is also expected that this growth will be sustainable in the coming three to four years owing to continued government expenditure in the infrastructure space, thus making raising capital for the equipment financing business pertinent.

The board of directors of SEFL at a meeting held today has decided to evaluate public offering of its equity share capital and constitute an IPO Committee to take all decisions relating to the IPO, including appointment of advisors, investment bankers, legal counsels, etc.

Shares of the company declined Rs 0.55, or 0.46%, to trade at Rs 120.00. The total volume of shares traded was 109,621 at the BSE (11.25 a.m., Friday).