Adani stocks slide again, flagship Adani Enterprises slumps 7% 

File photo of Adani Group building at Adani Shantigram near Ahmedabad.
| Photo Credit: Vijay Soneji

Shares of Adani Group companies fell on Tuesday with flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. slumping 7% on the BSE amid fresh concerns about debt repayment at the highly leveraged conglomerate.

Other group companies including Adani Green Energy, Adani Total Gas, Adani Power and Adani Wilmar all declined by the maximum permissible 5% after the lower circuit was triggered. 

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The group’s cement companies also retreated with ACC sliding by 4.2%, while Ambuja dropped by 2.9%. 

The group’s firms have suffered a combined erosion in market value of ₹80,096.75 crore over two sessions amidst media reports flagging concerns about the repayment of debt. 

On Tuesday, a report by the online news portal The Ken raised doubts about the Adani Group’s repayment of $2.15 billion of share-backed loans, citing regulatory filings examined by it. 

Following the report, the National Stock Exchange (NSE) and BSE had on Tuesday sought clarification from the group regarding the release of the pledged shares of the group companies.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Adani Group CFO Jugeshinder Robbie Singh said that stock exchanges update data on promoter share pledges at the end of the quarter, as he sought to clarify the reason for the present data not matching with the conglomerate’s statement of having repaid the $2.15 billion of share-backed debt.

Mr. Singh termed reports suggesting that the company’s March 7 and 12 announcements did not match with the information available on stock exchanges as “deliberate misrepresentation”, Press Trust of India reported.

Since the last week of January, the group has found itself ensnared in a global turmoil triggered by the scathing report published by the U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research that accused the group of stock price manipulation and accounting fraud. 

The group has denied all the allegations but has suffered an enormous erosion in its market capitalisation, forcing the group to prepay certain share backed loans while halting work on some of its other projects.

( with inputs from PTI)