New Delhi: India's first liquefied natural gas importer Petronet LNG Ltd will offer shares at a premium of Rs 3-5 in its initial public offering slated for March 1 to raise upto Rs 391.5 crore.

The offer of 261 million equity shares of Rs 10 each at a price of Rs 13-15 (including Rs 3-5 premium) will be open for bidding under the book-building route from March 1 to 9, PLL CEO and managing director Suresh Mathur said.

Of the 260,979,000 equity shares representing 34.8 per cent of the total equity, 55 per cent have been reserved for retail investors and 10 per cent for the employees of PLL and its promoter firms Oil and Natural Gas Corp, Indian Oil Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd and GAIL India Ltd.

Ten per cent of the offer has been reserved for Qualified Institutional Buyers (QIBs) and the remaining 25 per cent will be for non-institutional buyers or high worth individuals.

Market analysts said that the IPO was likely to be over-subscribed in the first couple of days of its opening as it had generated a lot of enthusiasm in domestic investors.

Already, SBI Mutual Fund and LIC Mutual Fund have indicated they would pick 10 per cent of the offering.

Mathur said road shows for the IPO will begin from Monday (Feb 23, 2004).

After the first road show on February 23 at New Delhi, meets to attract investors will be held at Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. Road shows will also be held at Pune, Vadodara and Rajkot.

PLL, which has appointed SBI Caps, DSP Merrill Lynch, JM Morgan Stanley, ICICI Securities and Enam Financial as the book runners for the issue, received the country's maiden cargo of LNG from Qatar on January 30.