YES stock takes investors on a roller-coaster ride

YES stock takes investors on a roller-coaster ride

A session after witnessing their biggest single-day fall, shares of YES Bank rebounded to stage their biggest single-day rise on Thursday.

The swift jump came after the lender clarified that Tuesday's fall was precipitated by a share sale triggered by invocation of pledge of shares of co-promoter Rana Kapoor.

The shares closed 32.97% higher at Rs 42.55 apiece, adding Rs 3,000 crore to the company's market cap. Intra-day the shares gained almost 36% to touch Rs 43.50 per scrip.

In a disclosure to the stock exchange, YES Bank said that it's promoter group companies Morgan Credits Pvt Ltd (MCPL) and Yes Capital India Ltd (YCPL) had to sell their highly precious promoter shareholdings in the bank at deeply discounted prices on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Morgan Credits and Yes Capital – the promoter entities of YES Bank – have expressed dejection over Reliance Nippon Life Asset Management's decision to invoke and sell pledged shares of Rana Kapoor through its debenture trustee Milestone Trusteeship.

"These were pledged by our father Rana Kapoor to support the borrowings of MCPL, a company owned by his three daughters for investing in start-up ventures in our capacity as women entrepreneurs," said the statement issued by MCPL and YCPL.

"We are highly dejected that our family shareholding in Yes Bank was sold at such dismal price levels, despite the bank having created long-term shareholder value and over 20,000 jobs during the last 15 years."

"As long-term shareholders and firm believers in the bank's future value creation potential, we do not consider these valuations to be reflective of an otherwise fundamentally solid bank with significant franchise value," added the statement.

Meanwhile, the lender in a conference call with analysts said that its group president Rajat Monga has resigned. Monga was with the bank since inception in 2004.

The lender said its fundamentals remained strong, and the recent sale of shares by key managerial personnel and employees was due to personal reasons.

YES Bank CEO Ravneet Gill said he expects to complete raising as much as $1.2 billion "much sooner than the market expects," after sales of pledged shares this week eliminated an overhang on the lender's stock. Gill reiterated on Thursday his target of selling $1 billion to $1.2 billion of new shares to private equity investors, technology companies and family offices, but declined to be more specific on the timing.

On Wednesday, the bank said its liquidity coverage ratio was in excess of 125% as on September 30, which was well above the minimum regulatory requirement of 100%.

The bank's deposits aggregated to Rs 2.09 lakh crore as of September 30, while the CASA ratio improved to 30.8% from 30.2% as of June 30.

Its gross advances aggregated to Rs 2.32 lakh crore at the end of September quarter against Rs 2.42 lakh crore reported for the June quarter with a higher share of retail advances.

The bank said it had shrunk its loans to enhance capital efficiency.