Shareholders of InterGlobe Aviation approve plan to raise Rs 3,000 crore

New Delhi: Shareholders of InterGlobe Aviation, parent of the country’s largest airline IndiGo, have approved a proposal to raise up to Rs 3,000 crore. The funds would be raised through the Qualified Institutional Placement route. The remote e-voting on the proposal commenced on 27 May and ended on 25 June. Shareholders of the company have cleared the proposal, it said in a regulatory filing on Saturday. Amid the airline industry facing strong headwinds due to the coronavirus pandemic, the company’s board, on 10 May, gave its nod to raise up to Rs 3,000 crore through sale of shares to institutional investors. On 5 June, IndiGo reported a consolidated net loss of Rs 1,147.2 crore in the three months ended March, mainly due to a sharp decline in revenues amid the pandemic. The airline, which had a fleet of 285 planes at the end of March 2021, had a net loss of Rs 870.8 crore in the year-ago period. As air travel demand was significantly hit by the pandemic, the carrier’s consolidated total income slumped over 26 percent to Rs 6,361.8 crore in the fourth quarter of the current fiscal. The total income was at Rs 8,634.6 crore in the 2020 March quarter. On 7 June, IndiGo Chief Financial Officer Jiten Chopra said the daily cash burn increased to Rs 19 crore in the March quarter from Rs 15 crore in the earlier quarter and given the current situation, the cash burn is expected to increase further in the June quarter. Emphasising that managing the cash position remains the primary focus, he had said, “we continue to work with all our stakeholders. For this purpose, we are working on securing credit line from lenders and entering into sale and lease back for the new aircraft”. These two actions will likely result in an additional liquidity of Rs 45 billion (Rs 4,500 crore) for the coming year, he had noted. “Apart from this, we have also secured board approval for raising funds by way of qualified institutional placement up to Rs 30 billion rupees (Rs 3,000 crore) and this proposal is under consideration by the shareholders,” he had said. For the full year ended March 2021, the company’s net loss widened to Rs 5,806.4 crore from Rs 233.7 crore in 2019-20 fiscal. Total income fell 58 percent to Rs 15,677.6 crore in the last financial year. The same stood at Rs 37,291.5 crore in the year-ago period.