BPDB gets 60 more days to sell PGCB shares 

The securities regulator has given the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) 60 more days to sell a portion of its shares of the Power Grid Company of Bangladesh (PGCB).

On 21 March, the BPDB, one of the corporate sponsors of the PGCB, expressed its intention to sell 3.43 crore shares out of its 56.89 crore shares by 29 April this year, but it failed to do so.

As of 8 April, the BPDB was able to sell around 21 lakh shares of the PGCB and it had only 14 working days to sell the rest of the shares.

The BPDB feared that trying to sell the huge amount of shares within such a short time might affect the share price negatively, so they applied to the stock market regulator in mid-April to extend the time period for selling those shares.

In response to the BPDB's appeal, the Bangladesh Securities and Exchange Commission (BSEC) has extended the time period by 60 more days from 29 April.

As per the law, sponsors and directors of any listed company cannot buy or sell its share without prior declaration.

As a part of the initiatives to increase the general investors' participation in the PGCB shares, the government last year decided to offload BPDB's 9.64% holding or more than 6.87 crore shares in the public market. 

At that time, the BPDB thought selling all those shares at once might have a negative impact on the PGCB shares' price in the market, so it decided to sell half of its 6.87 crore shares in the first phase.

The company completed selling 3.43 crore shares by mid-March this year and again expressed its intention to sell the rest.

The Power Grid Company of Bangladesh, a subsidiary of Bangladesh Power Development Board, got listed with the capital market in 2006. It is the main power transmission company in the country.

The company was incorporated in 1996 with the vision of "economic upliftment of the country by reaching electricity to all through reliable transmission."

The authorised capital of the company is Tk10,000 crore and paid-up capital Tk712.73 crore.

In the last 2019-2020 fiscal year, the company's revenue stood at Tk1,968.27 crore and profit was Tk480.86 crore. 

In the first nine months of the current fiscal year, the company posted year-on-year 12% revenue growth to Tk1,559.15 crore, from Tk1,388.84 crore in the previous year.

During the same period of fiscal year 2020-2021, the company's net profit decreased by 9.46% to Tk280.02 crore compared to the profit of Tk309.30 crore posted in the same time of the previous year.

On Sunday, its share price was Tk47.50 each at the Dhaka Stock Exchange.

As of March, sponsors and directors held 79.61%, institutional investors 14.20%, foreign investors 0.06% and general investors held 6.13% shares of the company.