New Delhi, March 3 (IANS): The SBI Cards IPO has been subscribed 58.46 per cent till post-lunch session on Day 2 of the bidding process on Tuesday amidst a panic of the coronavirus scare weighing on the market but retail investors, bank shareholders and employees rescued the bidding.

The first IPO of 2020 and from the second largest credit card company in India as per data by stock exchanges has received bids for over 5.9 crore equity shares against issue size of more than 10 crore shares (excluding anchor book's portion).

The portion for retail investors is subscribed handsomely 93.19 per cent, while that of employees saw 82.25 per cent subscription, and SBI shareholders portion is fully subscribed. The reserved portion of qualified institutional investors has subscribed to 0.1 per cent, while that of non-institutional investors category saw subscription of 21.15 per cent.

Employees of SBI Card, the subsidiary of State Bank of India, will receive shares at a discount of Rs 75 per share on final offer price.

Many analysts are seeing the timing for the IPO inadvertently wrong as SBI Cards began IPO journey on Friday, the day the market fell for the seventh day amid the virus scare. At the upper end of the price band of Rs 755 a share the offering will fetch Rs 10,300 crore ($1.4 billion).

Seen as expensive valuation by some analysts, still it isn't deterring investors who are seeing growth potential in the industry. The company has a 18 per cent share of the market where the number of cards outstanding per 100 people is less than 3. This figure is 320 in the US, 73 in Brazil and 42 in China, according to Axis Securities. It is this potential for growth that has most analysts recommending the IPO.

The largest IPO since October 2017 consists of a fresh issue of Rs 500 crore and offer for sale of more than 13.05 crore shares by parent State Bank of India and investors CA Rover Holdings, an affiliate of private equity Carlyle Group.