Hindustan Powerplus was locked at the 20% upper deck on Thursday following an announcement that Caterpillar Commercial SA of Belgium, along with its holding company, has made an offer to buy a 62.25% stake in the company.

By 10:20 IST, the scrip of the engine manufacturer stood at its upper ceiling of Rs 28.80. The offer price of Rs 32 comes at a premium of 11% to the currently traded price of the scrip. A total of 1,675 Hindustan Powerplus shares changed hands on BSE so far. At the time of writing this piece, the outstanding buy in Hindustan Powerplus was over 1.05 million shares .

Caterpillar Commercial SA (acquirer), a company incorporated under the laws of Belgium, along with its holding company Caterpillar Inc (persons acting in concert), incorporated under the laws of Delaware (USA), has announced an open offer to the shareholders of the company for acquiring the remaining shares in Hindustan Powerplus.

Caterpillar Commercial SA will acquire up to 19,779,914 equity shares of Rs 10 each representing 62.25% of the paid-up capital of the company, at a price of Rs 32 per share. The acquirer already holds 11,995,200 (37.75%) shares in Hindustan Powerplus. The offer opens on 12 March 2003 and closes on 10 April 2003.

Hindustan Powerplus was incorporated in October 1988 and then promoted by C K Birla Group Companies i.e. Hindustan Motors, Hyderabad Inds., Central India Industries, Rajasthan Industries, Universal Trading & National Bearing Company in technical and financial collaboration with Caterpillar of USA. The company began with the manufacture and marketing of heavy-duty internal combustion diesel engines and gensets.

HPL's manufacturing facility at Mathagondapalli near Hosur, TN commenced operations in January 1989. This plant has an installed capacity to manufacture 2800 units of ICD engines and 250 nos. of gensets. The company's products, diesel engines and gensets, are marketed under the brand name 'Caterpillar'. The aftersale parts are sold under the brand names of Caterpillar and Intac.

During the year 1999-2000, the company commenced sales of its factory-packaged gensets under the brand name "Caterpillar". The company has also tested the in-house developed generating sets which will reduce the vibration and noise level of the sets.

For the third quarter ended 31 December 2002, HPL registered a 68.3% rise in net profit to Rs 1.70 crore on a 18.7% increase in net sales to Rs 42.95 crore.

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