Infosys has become the first Indian company to be included in the Nasdaq-100 index and the only Indian company to be a part of a major global index.
The Nasdaq-100 is an index comprising the hundred largest non-financial stocks listed on the exchange, measured in terms of market capitalisation. Infosys was one of three stocks added in the annual re-ranking of the index. The other two are Level 3 Communications and Vertex. The three will join the index effective 18 December. Infosys is in elite company including Google, Cisco, Yahoo, Oracle, Apple and others. advertisement
“This develpoment is part of our journey to become a mainstream stock, globally,” says V Balakrishnan, the CFO of Infosys.
Infosys has worked towards this goal with its ADR issue in November being largely targeted at increasing the free float of the company to meet Nasdaq’s minimum requirements. At the time, the company sold 30 million ADRs in a deal valued at USD1.6 billion. Each ADR, representing one underlying share, was priced at USD53.50, a narrow 3.2 percent discount to the price that the company’s outstanding ADRs were trading at. In consonance with its objective, the sale was done by converting common shares into ADRs on a one-to-one basis. Post the issue, ADRs increased to 19 percent of shares outstanding. The deal allowed Japanese investors to participate through a Public Offering Without Listing (POWL) and five million shares were sold through this route.
Infosys has recently been one of the only stocks to move sideways on the bourses losing only 0.5 percent to close at Rs2187 (USD49.11). A bearish Mumbai market lost over 4 percent on adverse sentiment, due in part to a surprise move by the Reserve Bank of India to increase cash reserve ratios for banks by 50 basis points to 5.5 percent.