IPO Analysis · Mainboard · 18 August 2026

Blackstone sold shares at ₹59.81 in December. The IPO price is ₹60.

In December 2025, this company sold shares privately to Radhakishan Damani, SBI Life, State Bank of India and others at ₹59.81 each. Eight months later, it is asking the public for ₹60. The price has not moved. That one fact explains most of what follows.

What this company actually does

It builds big warehouses and industrial buildings, then rents them out.

Think of the buildings behind your online orders — the ones where parcels are stored and sorted. Horizon owns those and collects rent from companies that use them. It also rents to factories making things like EV parts, electronics and chemicals.

Rent goes up automatically by about 5% every year under the contracts. When old tenants renew, they have been paying about 12% more than before. The renting business itself works well.

Roughly half the space is still unbuilt. That is the part you need to think hardest about.

Why the price matters

Eight months ago, some of the most experienced investors in India bought into this company privately at ₹59.81. Today the public is offered the same shares at ₹60.

One way to read that: the company is being fair. It found a price, and it is not charging the public more.

The other way: those investors got the price they negotiated. The public gets the same price with no negotiation, and their shares become sellable around February 2027 — about 9.6% of the company, held by people who paid what you are paying.

If they sell, that is a lot of shares hitting the market at your cost price. It is also why nobody expects a big jump on listing day.

A wrong number going around

Several IPO alerts are saying the issue size is ₹17,297 crore. That is wrong.

₹17,297 crore is what the whole company is worth at ₹60 a share. The amount actually being raised is ₹2,600 crore — about seven times smaller.

Why it matters: ₹17,297 crore would make this one of the biggest IPOs India has seen. It is not. It is a mid-sized fundraise, and most of it goes to paying off loans.

Is it really growing 77%?

No. And this one is worth understanding, because it is the most misleading number in the whole document.

The company reports revenue two ways.

Here is the difference in plain terms. Horizon bought 35 of its 45 buildings in the last two years, mostly from Blackstone itself. When you buy a building that already earns rent, your revenue jumps — but you did not grow, you shopped.

The second row strips that out and asks: how much more did the same buildings earn? Answer: about 13%.

Thirteen percent is a decent number. But it is not seventy-seven. Anyone quoting 77% is quoting a shopping list.

It loses money. Here is why.

Look at the middle row. The buildings earn well — about 79 paise of profit on every rupee of rent, which is genuinely excellent. Then the interest bill eats it.

This company does not have a business problem. It has a debt problem.

And that is exactly what the IPO fixes. Of the ₹2,600 crore raised, ₹2,250 crore repays loans. That saves roughly ₹190 crore of interest every year, which is roughly the size of the loss.

So the company should reach around break-even next year and small profits the year after — not because it grew, but because it stopped paying so much interest.

One catch: the company says it plans to fund most future construction with more borrowing. If the debt comes back, so does the interest.

What is it actually worth?

An independent valuer was asked what the properties are worth. The answer, as at 31 March 2026:

Good news first. The accounts understate the property by ₹3,633 crore, because buildings are recorded at what they cost, not what they are worth. So the company is worth more than its balance sheet suggests — roughly ₹40–41 a share once you adjust.

Now the other side. At ₹60 a share, buying the whole company — shares plus the debt that comes with it — costs about ₹19,289 crore. The property inside it is valued at ₹13,529 crore.

You are paying about ₹1.43 for every ₹1.00 of valued property.

Is that mad? Not necessarily. The valuer only counted buildings that exist or are being built. It did not count profit from the 22.81 million sq ft still to be built. If Horizon builds at roughly ₹2,500 a sq ft on land it already owns, and those buildings end up worth ₹4,000, that creates around ₹4,500 crore of new value — which largely explains the gap.

But that takes four to five years, about ₹7,500 crore of new money, and everything going right. At ₹60 you pay for it today, before any of it happens. There is no cushion if it runs late.

Who bought in the anchor round

Anchor investors are large institutions who buy a day before the IPO opens. It is a useful signal of what professionals think.

They all paid ₹60 — the top of the band, and the same price as the December private round.

Two things stand out. Carmignac, a French fund house, appears three times and took about a quarter of the entire anchor book on its own. That is one firm making a big bet, not many firms agreeing.

And about 12% of the book came in through something called an ODI — a structure where a foreign bank buys the shares but someone else, whose name is not disclosed, actually owns the exposure. So roughly one rupee in eight of the anchor money belongs to someone the filing does not name.

GMP and subscription

The premium has fallen by about 72% in five days, while the IPO price never changed. Subscription was 0.24x on day two of three — meaning less than a quarter of the shares on offer had been applied for.

I would not predict a listing price from this. What it does show is that the unofficial market has landed on the same conclusion the arithmetic reaches on its own: at ₹60, there is not much left over. Big institutions usually bid on the last day, so the subscription number will move before it closes.

What worries me

1. This company is newly assembled. 32 of its 45 buildings came from Blackstone or related companies in the last two years, paid for in shares rather than cash. The company you are buying is barely two years old in its current form.
2. Nothing to compare it against. The prospectus itself says there is no similar listed company anywhere. So there is no benchmark telling you whether ₹60 is cheap or expensive. You are trusting the anchor investors to have priced it correctly.
3. You cannot see who the tenants are. Over half the rented space goes to Fortune 500 companies — but none agreed to be named. The ten biggest tenants are 43% of the rent. You cannot check how solid they are.
4. Most rent comes from four cities. Delhi-NCR, Chennai, Bangalore and Pune are 79% of income, with Delhi alone a third. Delhi has a draft policy proposing to move warehouses out of crowded areas.
5. Occupancy dipped during the year — from 93.94% to 89.88% — before recovering to 93.56% by May. Explained by newly bought buildings not yet full, but worth watching.
6. No dividend in three years, and none promised. If you want regular income, this is not it.

What is genuinely good

• Blackstone is not selling a single share. Every rupee goes to the company. They bought in years ago at far below ₹60 and could have cashed out. They did not. That means something.
• The land is already bought and paid for. All the space still to be built sits on land the company owns. In Indian real estate, land is where projects usually die. That risk is off the table.
• The renting business is excellent — 79% margins, automatic rent increases, and tenants renewing at 12% higher rates.
• One company, one management. No external manager taking a fee, which is common in this industry and quietly expensive.
• India needs these buildings. India has about 0.5 sq ft of warehouse space per person, against 0.8 in China and far more in richer countries. The demand is real, not a story.

Common questions

Verification ledger

My position — a disclosure, not a recommendation

Two facts decide it for me. Experienced investors set the price at ₹59.81 eight months ago and it has not moved since. And the independent valuer puts the property at ₹13,529 crore while the price tag is ₹19,289 crore — the difference is a bet on buildings that do not exist yet.

Nothing forces you to own this on day one. Within a year you will be able to see whether paying off the loans actually made it profitable, whether occupancy stayed above 93%, and how quickly the new buildings filled up. Right now all three are hopes. In four quarters they are facts.

What would change my mind: buildings completing faster than expected, in-city rents rising quicker than the 10% a year forecast, or the share price falling below about ₹40 after listing.

More IPO analysis

• Lalithaa Jewellery IPO — profit tripled, and it sold 0.74% more gold
• Behari Lal Engineering IPO — profit up 22%, volume down 1%, cash down 55%
• Shiprocket IPO — read from the prospectus
• Milky Mist Dairy IPO — read from the prospectus
• Dhoot Transmission IPO — a 41% market share, priced at a 35% discount

Not SEBI registered. This is not investment advice and is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Figures come from the Draft Red Herring Prospectus of Horizon Industrial Parks Limited dated 29 December 2025 and the anchor allocation letter dated 14 August 2026, together with figures from the final Red Herring Prospectus dated 11 August 2026 identified in the sourcing note above as not yet re-checked. Valuation calculations are my own and are labelled as such. Price band, lot size, listing date and grey market premium are from market sources, not from the prospectus. Please read the offer document and do your own research before investing.

A listing scorecard for this call will be published after listing, whatever the outcome.