Despite the hype about retail investors keeping aside cash to subscribe to the slew of recent initial public offers, a study of 12 offers floated between February 2003 and February 2004 shows that retail investors applied for only a small proportion of them.

Of the 12 offers studied, only those of Indraprastha Gas, TV Today and UCO Bank were overwhelmingly supported by retail investors.

While the retail share of the Indraprastha Gas offer was oversubscribed 29.73 times, that of UCO Bank was oversubscribed 11.87 times. TV Today's retail allotment was oversubscribed 24.59 times.

The participation of retail investors in the first-ever 100 per cent book-building public offer of Bharti Tele-Ventures was minimal. Of the 7,978,700 shares allocated to retail bidders, only 77,800 (17.2 per cent of the retail allocation) were subscribed.

The basis of allotment in the recent Patni Computer Systems offer shows that applicants who bid for less than 150 shares together applied for 10.8 million shares, accounting for just 23.54 per cent of the 45.9 million shares bid by retail and non-institutional investors.

The final tally shows that only 1.1 million shares were allotted to these investors, which works out to a meagre 0.93 per cent of the total equity capital of the company.

The retail share in Lux Hosiery's public offer was under-subscribed 0.89 times. The retail part of the Indian Overseas Bank issue was oversubscribed 5.30 times, Bag Films 2.29 times, Divi's Laboratories 7.93 times and Maruti Udyog 2.54 times.

On the contrary, the institutional and non-institutional parts of the Maruti offer were oversubscribed 14 times each. The non-institutional part of the Divi's Laboratories issue was subscribed 48 times, Indraprastha Gas 74 times, TV Today 86 times, Bharti Tele-Ventures 3 times and UCO Bank 25 times.

The study shows that retail investors sell these shares immediately after listing. The public holding in Maruti Udyog declined to 5.77 per cent at the end of December 2003 from 7.78 per cent at the time of allotment.

In Canara Bank it has declined from 16.88 per cent at the time of allotment to 10.81 per cent now, in Punjab National Bank from around 13.23 per cent to 6.06 per cent and in D-Link India from around 7.81 per cent to 6.75 per cent.

From the shareholding pattern of Bombay Stock Exchange Sensex stocks between March 2003 and December 2003, it is seen that retail investors booked profits and took the money home in almost all these stocks.

The public holding in all the 30 Sensex stocks declined--by 9.93 per cent in ACC at the higher end and by 0.27 per cent each in Hindustan Petroleum, BHEL, Bharti and Wipro at the lower end.