GQG Partners purchased 2.2 million shares of Adani Ports on Thursday week, raising its stake in the company to 5.03 per cent, GQG Partners said in a disclosure. The investment firm had already held a 4.93 per cent stake in Adani Ports And Special Economic Zone Ltd. The development came days after Deloitte resigned as the company’s auditor.
Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd’s statutory auditor revealed that the US-headquartered Big 4 auditor resigned prematurely primarily due to lack of clarity on transactions with certain parties alleged in the 24 January Hindenburg Research report, and because of the ₹1.75 trillion Gautam Adani-led company’s resistance to conduct an independent external evaluation.
As a “material weakness” identified as at 31 March, Deloitte said, “The company (Adani Ports) did not have an appropriate internal control system in respect of conducting an external examination of allegations made on the company.”
Deloitte added that Adani Ports did not have adequate internal control system to even examine veracity of allegations ( made by Hindenburg) on related party relationships, which could potentially result in possible adjustments or disclosures of related party relationships, balances and transactions in the standalone financial statements.
Earlier this week, the US-based investment firm had also picked up an 8.1 per cent stake in Adani Power. Two promoter entities of the Adani group company sold a combined 31.2 crore shares worth more than ₹8,700 crore in separate bulk deals on Wednesday.
In June, GQG Partners along with other investors had bought stakes worth about $1 billion in two group companies — Adani Enterprises and Adani Green Energy.
Adani Ports and Special Economic Zones announced its April-June quarter results for fiscal 2023-24 (Q1FY24) on August 8, reporting a rise of 82.6 per cent to ₹2,114.7 crore, compared to ₹1,158.3 crore in the corresponding period last year. The port major’s revenue from operations in the first quarter of current fiscal stood at ₹6,247.6 crore, registering a rise of 23.5 per cent, compared to ₹5,058 crore in the year-ago period.
On August 18, shares of Adani Ports settled 3.13 per cent higher at ₹835.85 apiece on the BSE.