Understanding what is delisting of shares and what it means to shareholders: With the latest news of Vedanta delisting plans buzzing in the market, a lot of investors are confused about what delisting of shares actually means and why companies go for delisting. Moreover, investors are worried about what happens to the shareholders once the company gets delisted from the stock exchange. 

In this article, we take a look at the delisting of shares and will try to demystify most of the frequently asked questions and facts around it. Let’s get started.

What is Delisting of Shares?

Delisting refers to a listed company removing its shares from trading on a stock exchange platform. As a consequence of delisting, the securities of that company would no longer be traded at that stock exchange. The company will now be a private company.

A long as the stock is traded in one of the exchanges that are made available to investors throughout the country it is considered as a listed stock. Anyways, if a company is listed in multiple stock exchanges in a country and decides to stop trading from just one of the exchanges, it is not considered as delisting. However, if it removes its shares from all the stock exchanges barring people to trade, then it is considered as delisting of shares. 

Types of Delisting

If we try and figure out why a company is getting delisted the reasons can be grouped into two categories.

1.  Voluntary delisting

Voluntary delisting occurs when a company decides on its own to remove its securities from a stock exchange. The company pays shareholders to return the shares held by them and removes the entire lot from the exchange. 

Why would a company want to delist from the exchange?

Voluntary delisting generally occurs when the company has plans to expand or restructure. At times a company may be acquired by an investor who is looking to hold a majority share. This share may be greater than that permissible by the government. In India, it is mandatory that at least 25% of the shareholding be available to the public. An acquirer who wants over 75% of holdings may expect the company to go private and hence delist. At times the company is also delisted to allow the promoters a greater share. 

The exchange regulations may also be a cause for voluntary delisting.  This is because companies may find it difficult to comply with regulations as they may hinder their functioning. These companies would prefer to delist.

Existing shareholder approval for delisting

A delisting that is of voluntary nature can only occur if shareholders holding up to 90% of the share capital agree to the delisting offer made by the company. The shareholders at times may not agree to delist. if they foresee a rise in the price of the shares or are not happy with the current offer made by the company to buyback the shares as they feel the shares are worth much more. A delisting process may take years to complete hence the shareholders get ample time.

2. Involuntary or Compulsory Delisting

In the case of involuntary delisting, the company is forced by the regulatory authority to stop its shares from trading.  This is also used by the regulatory authority to penalize the company. The investors do not have the opportunity to vote against the delisting in this case.

Here are the Grounds for the company being compulsorily delisted:

1. Failure to maintain the requirements set by the exchange
2. The shares of the company being suspended from trading for more than 6 months or being traded infrequently over the last three years
3. Bankruptcies, where the company has posted losses for the last three years and has a net worth which is negative

Here, the Promoters are required to purchase the shares from the public shareholders as per a fair value determined by an independent valuer.

Voluntary Delisting process

Assuming that promoters, shareholders, and the company’s board of directors agree, the delisting process will take a minimum of 8-10 weeks from the date of announcement of the shareholder meeting to approve the delisting proposal. Here are the steps involved in voluntary delisting of stocks:

1. Appointment of a Merchant Banker

Once the board takes the decision to delist the first major step is appointing an independent merchant banker. A merchant banker overlooks the Reverse book building process. Reverse book building is the process by which a company that wants to delist from the bourses, decides on the price that needs to be paid to public shareholders to buy back shares. Here, it has to follow a detailed regulatory process.

2. Initiate the Reverse Book Building Process through online bidding

The merchant banker oversees the Reverse book building process. It is the process used by the company to set a price that is used to attract the investors into agreeing to the delisting. In this process, the shareholders bid online the prices at which they would be willing to sell the shares. The reverse book building process is used only in India.

To protect the investors the SEBI has also set a floor price which is the minimum the company can offer to the shareholders. The floor price should be the average of weekly closing highs and lows of 26 weeks or of the last two weeks, whichever is higher.

3. Set up Escrow Account before offering terms of delisting to public

To ensure that the company has the ability to purchase the shares from the shareholders it is required to create an account specifically for this purpose. This account is known as an Escrow account. The amount in the escrow account will only be used towards delisting.

4. Gaining Shareholder Approval

 Once the merchant banker receives the prices he makes an appropriate offer to the shareholders in the form of Offer Letters sent by post. The shareholders may or may not accept the offer. The company has to gain the approval of over 90% of the shares of all the shareholders. To acquire this approval what the company does is, make an offer to the existing shareholders to buy the shares from them at a premium. The shares must be bought back by the company at a price that is equal to or higher than the floor price.

Say a situation arises where 25% of the shareholders do not participate in the book-building process. Here as long as it can be proved that the offers were delivered to the shareholders by registered or speed post and the delivery status can be confirmed, the shareholders will be deemed as compliant to the divesting of the company.

If 90% of the shareholders agree to the prices and the companies decision to delist then the company can go ahead and delist from the stock exchange. 

What happens to shareholders who refuse to sell?

If investors do not take part in the reverse book building process they still have the option to sell their shares back to promoters. It is mandated that the promoters accept the shares. The price here would be the same price exit price accepted from the reverse book building process. The shareholders will be allowed to do this for one year from the date of closure of the delisting process. 

If a shareholder still doesn’t sell the shares back within a year he will end up holding non-tradable securities. Shareholders do this in cases where they expect the company to begin trading publicly again after a period. The shares of the shareholder, however, will still be affected by all corporate actions taken by the company.

It must be noted here retail investors (i.e. investment of less than 2 Lakh in the company) do not have much influence over the price and delisting decisions. In the case of a recent delisting announcement of Vedanta Ltd, Retail investors made up only 7.26% of the total holdings.

However, if the shareholders are unhappy with the prices or the delisting they can move to the courts. In 2005, shareholders who held 2.4% holdings moved to the courts over Cadbury offering Rs. 500 per share for being delisted. This was done despite Cadbury acquiring over 90% approval for delisting. After a decade the Bombay High Court ordered the company to pay Rs.2014.50 per share.

Also read: 11 Must-Know Catalysts That Can Move The Share Price

Using Delisting as an investment strategy

In 2010 the government made it compulsory for companies that are traded in the stock exchange to make at least 25% available to the public. This encouraged companies that had promoters owning more than 75% of the company to delist their securities. This caused investors to target companies where the promoters have ownership of 80-90%. This was done in anticipation that the company will buy back the shares at a premium. This increased the demand and hence increased the prices. 

Investors also have to consider that a failed delisting may result in a fall in the prices as investors who may have anticipated premiums may engage in mass selloffs. Not to mention that a delisting procedure may take years.

Apart from this investors also should take note of the period during which a delisting takes place. Say a company tries to delist in times of market downturn or elongated bearish markets, it may be a strategy to buy back shares at a cheaper rate when investors are desperate for liquidity. 

Aron Almeida

Aron, Bachelors in Commerce from Mangalore University, entered the world of Equity research to explore his interests in financial markets. Outside of work, you can catch him binging on a show, supporting RCB, and dreaming of visiting Kasol soon. He also believes that eating kid’s ice-cream is the best way to teach them taxes.