IndiGo stock falls 4% amid block deal report

Shares of IndiGo parent InterGlobe Aviation dropped 4.25% on Thursday amid reports that Shobha Gangwal, the wife of airline's co-promoter Rakesh Gangwal, sold 3.7% equity stake in a block deal.

The stock was trading at ₹1,901 apiece on the National Stock Exchange (NSE) at 12:50 pm. It touched an intraday low of ₹1,895.

The development comes about a year after IndiGo co-founder Rakesh Gangwal said he plans to slowly reduce his equity stake in India's largest carrier over the next five years or more. Gangwal had announced his exit from the airline's board in February 2022.

This is the second round of stake sale by the Gangwal family. The family had sold a 2.8% stake in IndiGo for about ₹2,000 crore in September 2022.

As of December 2022, IndiGo's promoter and promoter group held 71.92% stake in the company, which will now come down to 67.52%. Rahul Bhatia, IndiGo co-founder and its current managing director, holds 37.8% stake in the airline.

The stake sale comes at a time when rival Air India has placed the biggest aircraft order ever from U.S.-based Boeing and French aerospace giant Airbus. The Tata-owned airline plans to buy 540 aircraft to modernise fleet and expand its network.

IndiGo, the country's largest domestic airline, commands a market share of over 50%. Its net profit surged around 996% year-on-year to ₹1,422.6 crore for the third quarter compared with a profit of ₹129.8 crore in the year-ago period. Revenue from operations surged 61% to ₹14,933 crore in the third quarter as against ₹9,294 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

Yield, the average amount of revenue received per paying passenger flown one kilometre, rose 21.9% year-on-year to ₹5.38 per kilometre. The airline's load factor, or the passenger carrying capacity being utilised, improved 5.4 percentage points to 85.1%.

IndiGo's total income rose to ₹15,410 crore in the December quarter from ₹9,480 crore in the corresponding period a year ago.

"Third quarter performance was strong both operationally and financially in the backdrop of robust demand for air travel. The wide range of initiatives that were set in motion across the organization have started to yield results," said IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers. "With a modern fleet of over 300 aircraft, we continue to serve the market with further capacity growth planned across domestic and international sectors," he added.