Him Parbat Hydropower's Rs 59.15 crore IPO opens October 28 — Dolakha locals and Nepalese abroad apply first

On Wednesday, October 28, Him Parbat Hydropower Limited opens the first phase of its initial public offering: 2,112,500 shares at Rs 100 each, reserved for residents of Dolakha's project-affected areas and for Nepalese working abroad. The issue was approved by SEBON at its Ashwin 16, 2083 (October 2, 2026) board meeting. In full, the company is floating 5,915,000 shares worth Rs 591.5 million — 35 percent of its Rs 1.69 billion issued capital — with Citizens Capital Limited as the issue and sales manager.

This is the standard SEBON sequencing for hydropower IPOs: locals and migrant workers first, the general public later in a separate notice. Here is the verified shape of phase one — who can apply, for how many shares, by when, and where.

Phase one at a glance

The ward split inside the local quota

The 16.9 lakh local shares are not one open pool. 1,014,000 shares are reserved for the most-affected areas — wards 5, 6, 7 and 8 of Bigu Rural Municipality and wards 2, 3 and 4 of Kalinchok Rural Municipality — and the remaining 676,000 shares for permanent residents of the other wards of the two rural municipalities. Applicants apply according to the ward of their permanent residence, so the ward on your citizenship or migration papers decides which sub-quota you fall into.

For the local phase, applications are physical, not online: Nepal Investment Bank, Sindhu Development Bank and Prabhu Bank's Singati branch, the Sunkhani extension counter of Laxmi Sunrise Bank, and Citizens Bank's Charikot branch are the collection points, with a Rs 2 fee for the application form. Nepalese abroad apply the modern way — through C-ASBA at participating banks and financial institutions or directly on the MyShare system.

What the BB+ rating actually says

ICRA Nepal assigned the company its 'ICRANP-IR BB+' issuer rating on August 13, 2026, valid for one year — read by the agency as moderate risk in the company's ability to meet its financial obligations. Two things are worth keeping straight. First, an issuer rating is the agency's view of repayment capacity, not a recommendation to apply and not a comment on the listing-day price. Second, BB+ sits in the middle of the scale: not the distressed end where many pre-revenue hydropower issuers land, and not the top end either.

The company behind the issue

The approval note that matters most is SEBON's own reasoning: the board cleared the issue after verifying the project's operational viability and financial health. Construction is complete, commercial electricity generation has commenced, and the company's net worth per share stands above Rs 100 — the regulatory eligibility bar. The assets are the company's Dolakha plants: the 20 MW Sagu Khola project alongside the smaller 5.5 MW Sagu Khola-1. In plain terms, subscribers are buying into plants that already generate, not financing the riskiest stretch of construction.

Shares nobody applies for don't vanish

The issue carries a reallocation clause: whatever goes unsubscribed in the local or foreign-employment quotas merges into the general-public pool for the second phase. That is also why the general public's exact unit count is not fixed yet — it depends on how phase one subscribes.

The general-public phase: dates still to come

No general-phase notice has been published yet — no opening date, no closing date, no final unit count. When it arrives, it will set all three. Until then, any general-public figures floating around are arithmetic, not announcements, and should be treated that way.

Two honest caveats before you apply

First, the approved prospectus is not public yet. Every figure in this article comes from the issue announcement as reported by ICT Frame (October 12, 2026), Nepse Bajar (October 19–20, 2026), ShareSansar and Merolagani's IPO tracker — triple-checked across them, but still reported rather than prospectus-verified. Read the approved prospectus when it publishes; it is the only document that can overrule a news report.

Second, trust the Bikram Sambat dates. Some English portal reports garble the AD dates in translation — one currently says the issue opens 'October 11th'. The authoritative dates are Kartik 11, Kartik 16, Kartik 25 and Mangsir 10; the AD equivalents above are converted from those, with weekdays verified.

Frequently asked questions

When does the Him Parbat Hydropower IPO open?

Kartik 11, 2083 (Wednesday, October 28, 2026) — the first phase, for project-affected locals of Dolakha and for Nepalese working abroad. The general-public phase has no announced dates yet.

How many shares can one applicant apply for in the HPHL IPO?

A minimum of 10 shares and a maximum of 10,000 shares per applicant in both the local and the foreign-employment categories, at Rs 100 per share.

Who qualifies for the local quota of the HPHL IPO?

Permanent residents of Bigu and Kalinchok rural municipalities in Dolakha. 1,014,000 shares are reserved for wards 5–8 of Bigu and wards 2–4 of Kalinchok (the most-affected areas), and 676,000 shares for the remaining wards of the two rural municipalities.

What does the ICRA BB+ rating on the HPHL IPO mean?

ICRA Nepal assigned its 'ICRANP-IR BB+' issuer rating on August 13, 2026, valid for one year — indicating moderate risk in the company's ability to meet its financial obligations. A credit rating is an agency's view of repayment capacity, not a recommendation to apply.

This article is published for research and education purposes only. It is not investment advice, and nothing here should be read as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security. Figures are from the HPHL issue announcement as reported by ICT Frame, Nepse Bajar, ShareSansar and Merolagani's IPO tracker as of October 23, 2026; the approved prospectus is not public yet and the general-public phase is unannounced.