Jio Financial: Motilal Oswal MF buys 0.6% stake in RIL's demerged entity for Rs 754 cr

Motilal Oswal Mutual Fund on Friday bought 3.72 crore shares (0.6% stake) of Jio Financial Services Ltd worth Rs 754 crore, showed exchange data. This is one of their largest market purchases ever. Motilal Oswal MF bought the shares at Rs 202.8 apiece

In March 2023, Motilal Oswal MF bought 10 crore shares of Zomato, which gave it nearly 85% returns so far.

Shares of RIL's demerged entity on Friday rose for the first time since its market debut on Monday, having hit its lower trading limit for five sessions.

The stock rose as much as 4.7%, after opening down 5%. It swung repeatedly between gains and losses in extremely volatile trading and closed trading nearly 4% higher at Rs 221.6.

Spun out of billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd, JFS was valued at around $20 billion during a "price discovery" session in mid-July, but has since dropped to $15.6 billion as of Friday.

JFS was automatically included in the benchmark Nifty 50 and Sensex indexes due to Reliance's presence, with the plan to remove the stock at the end of August 23.

However, India's stock exchanges on August 22 delayed the removal till August 28, as the stock continuously hit lower circuits.

S&P Dow Jones Indices on Friday said JFS will now be removed from all the S&P BSE Indices effective prior to the open of trading on September 1.

Analysts had said the continuous selling seen on the stock was related to funds selling JFS stock that they had gotten as a part of Reliance Industries' demerger and expected it to subside, as passive funds tracking indexes exit the stock ahead of its removal from benchmark indexes.

The cumulative selling of JFS in both the Nifty and BSE indexes is estimated around 150 million to 160 million shares, Nuvama Alternative & Quantitative Research said in a note on Friday.

With inputs from Reuters