Tonbo Imaging IPO Opens October 15: Anchor Book, Order Book and Valuation vs Defence Peers

Bidding for the Tonbo Imaging IPO opens on October 15, 2026, and the anchor book has already done some of the talking. A day before the issue opened, the Bengaluru defence electronics maker raised ₹255.36 crore from anchor investors at ₹700 a share, the top of its ₹665–700 price band, Moneycontrol reported. Our earlier Tonbo Imaging IPO review went over the basic terms. Here we dig further into the red herring prospectus (RHP): who is selling, what the order book and customer list look like, how the valuation stacks up against listed defence peers, and what a retail applicant should check before bidding closes on October 19.

Tonbo Imaging IPO October 15: the issue at a glance

The offer is a pure offer for sale (OFS) of up to 1,21,74,046 equity shares of face value ₹2, with no fresh issue, according to the RHP dated October 10, 2026. At ₹700, that works out to about ₹852.18 crore, the figure the Financial Express also reported. The key terms:

• Price band: ₹665 to ₹700 per share.
• Lot size: 21 shares, or ₹14,700 per lot at the upper band (Financial Express).
• Dates: anchor bidding on October 14; the issue opens Thursday, October 15 and closes Monday, October 19. The UPI mandate cut-off is 5 pm on the closing day (RHP).
• Indicative timetable (RHP): basis of allotment on or about October 21, refunds and credit of shares on or about October 22, and trading on BSE and NSE on or about Friday, October 23.
• Allocation: not more than 50% of the net offer for qualified institutional buyers, not less than 15% for non-institutional investors and not less than 35% for retail individual investors, plus an employee reservation of up to 14,000 shares (RHP).
• Lead managers and registrar: JM Financial and IIFL Capital Services; KFin Technologies is the registrar (RHP).

The company has 5,72,82,100 shares outstanding before the offer, and the number does not change after it because no new shares are issued (RHP). At ₹700 that implies a market value of about ₹4,009.75 crore, in line with the ₹4,009.8 crore figure Inc42 reported. The shares on offer are about 21.3% of the company, by our calculation from the RHP share counts.

Reading the anchor book

Tonbo allotted 36.48 lakh shares to anchor investors on October 14, of which 21.05 lakh went to 12 domestic mutual funds, according to Moneycontrol. That is about 57.7% of the anchor book, the same share Inc42 reported citing BSE data, which also put the number of anchor investors at 43. Foreign names in the book included Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and Allianz, and domestic funds included SBI, HDFC, Axis, Kotak and Mirae Asset, both outlets reported.

By our calculation, the anchor shares are close to 30% of the total offer. That fits the structure in the RHP: institutions get up to half of the net offer, and up to 60% of that institutional portion can go to anchors. Under the RHP, half of the anchor shares are locked in for 90 days from allotment and the other half for 30 days, so the first anchor unlock falls roughly a month after listing.

A full anchor book at the cap price shows institutions are willing to pay the top of the band. It does not tell you what the stock will do after listing, and anchor shares are allocated on a discretionary basis by the company and its lead managers, unlike the retail category, which is allotted under SEBI rules after the issue closes. Our guide to IPO investing in India explains how to weigh anchor demand against the rest of the prospectus.

Who is selling, and at what cost

Because this is an OFS, the company receives no money from the IPO; the proceeds, after issue expenses, go to the selling shareholders (RHP, Moneycontrol). The largest sellers are the two CEAQ Technologies entities. CEAQ Technologies Private Limited is offering up to 49,98,100 shares and CEAQ Technologies Pte. Ltd. up to 41,55,096 shares, according to the RHP. Together that is 91,53,196 shares, or about 75% of the offer, worth roughly ₹640.7 crore at ₹700 by our calculation.

The three promoters are selling too. The RHP lists Arvind Kondangi Lakshmikumar offering up to 11.5 lakh shares, Ankit Kumar up to 5.8 lakh and Cecilia D’Souza up to 2.3 lakh. Their weighted average cost of acquisition is shown as nil for Lakshmikumar and ₹33.91 per share for the other two, adjusted for a bonus issue and share split. Promoter group entity Vinimaya Advisory LLP is selling up to 3,39,700 shares at a cost of ₹197.06.

Every rupee of this ₹852 crore issue goes to existing shareholders, with about three-quarters of the shares coming from the two CEAQ entities, so the IPO is an exit and price-discovery event, not a funding round for growth.

Early holders selling at a big gain over their cost is routine in an IPO, and on its own it isn’t a red flag. What it does mean is that the business case has to stand on the company’s own cash flows and order pipeline, since the balance sheet gets nothing from this issue.

Revenue, profit and a loss-making June quarter

The restated numbers show a business that grew, then shrank. Revenue from operations was ₹428.19 crore in FY24, ₹469.08 crore in FY25 and ₹362.65 crore in FY26, a 22.69% fall in the latest year (RHP). Restated profit after tax went from ₹68.54 crore to ₹72.76 crore and then down to ₹50.88 crore. In the three months to June 30, 2026, revenue from operations was ₹36.01 crore and the company posted a loss of ₹17.74 crore.

The RHP gives two reasons for the FY26 drop: delays in executing some international orders because of the West Asia conflict, and some expected orders moving from FY26 to FY27. It specifically mentions a ₹51.44 crore order received in FY26 that could not be executed in the year and now sits in the order book, expected to be delivered in FY27. For the June quarter loss, it points to seasonality, slow execution and costs such as salaries and depreciation that are spread evenly through the year while revenue is weighted to the second half.

Margins held up better than revenue. EBITDA margin was 29.65% in FY25 and 28.85% in FY26, while gross profit margin eased from 56.38% to 51.05% (RHP KPI table). Return on equity, though, fell from 20.20% in FY25 to 9.75% in FY26.

Exports collapsed, and the customer list is concentrated

Two KPIs in the RHP stand out. First, exports made up 65.52% of revenue from operations in FY25, but only 5.57% in FY26 and 0.25% in the June 2026 quarter. Second, the revenue mix shifted from what the RHP calls the “tactical” product category to the “platform” category. Tactical revenue fell from ₹362.30 crore in FY25 to ₹211.68 crore in FY26, while platform revenue rose from ₹101.05 crore to ₹144.81 crore.

Customer concentration is high, and it jumps around from year to year. From the RHP’s risk factors:

• The largest customer contributed 57.07% of revenue from operations in FY25, 13.78% in FY26 and 54.74% in the June 2026 quarter.
• The top 10 customers contributed 95.49% of revenue in FY25 and 77.83% in FY26.
• The company had fewer than 20 customers in the June 2026 quarter, and customer names are not disclosed because of confidentiality rules on defence contracts.

The RHP also says most business comes through one-off competitive tenders with limited scope for repeat orders, which makes revenue uneven. It discloses a bid-to-win ratio of 40.91% in FY24, 35.94% in FY25 and 34.35% in FY26. In the June 2026 quarter it won 2 of 14 bids submitted, a ratio of 14.29%.

Order book and working capital

The confirmed order book was ₹314.24 crore at June 30, 2026, made up of 30 domestic orders worth ₹231.87 crore and 6 overseas orders worth ₹82.37 crore (RHP). It was ₹279.02 crore at March 2026, ₹218.61 crore at March 2025 and ₹563.14 crore at March 2024. By our calculation, the June order book is about 0.87 times FY26 revenue, so it covers less than a year of sales at last year’s run rate.

Working capital is where the stress shows. The RHP puts working capital days at 152 in FY24, 280 in FY25 and 517 in FY26. Inventories rose to ₹319.63 crore at June 30, 2026, from ₹219.49 crore at March 2026 and ₹111.14 crore at March 2025. Short-term borrowings climbed to ₹129.72 crore at June 30, 2026 from ₹78.14 crore at March 2025, and the company moved from net cash of ₹101.99 crore at March 2025 to net debt of ₹34.74 crore at June 2026, based on the RHP’s capital management note.

A 517-day working capital cycle means money tied up in stock and receivables for well over a year, which is why the order book’s conversion into cash matters as much as its size.

Valuation against listed defence peers

At the ₹700 cap, the issue is priced at about 78.8 times Tonbo’s FY26 diluted earnings per share of ₹8.88, and about 74.9 times at the ₹665 floor, by our calculation from the RHP EPS. On FY26 net asset value of ₹96.57 per share, the cap price is about 7.25 times book.

The RHP compares Tonbo with five listed defence electronics companies, using BSE closing prices on October 7, 2026 and FY26 diluted EPS:

• Paras Defence and Space Technologies: P/E 117.74, FY26 revenue ₹476.57 crore.
• Data Patterns (India): P/E 87.29, revenue ₹924.77 crore, RoNW 17.00%.
• Astra Microwave Products: P/E 83.92, revenue ₹1,162.80 crore.
• Zen Technologies: P/E 73.44, revenue ₹687.69 crore.
• Bharat Electronics: P/E 45.70, revenue ₹27,610.11 crore.

The peer average P/E in the RHP is 81.62, so Tonbo’s cap-price multiple sits slightly below that average. The comparison has limits. Tonbo is the smallest of the six by FY26 revenue, its earnings fell in FY26 and turned into a loss in the latest quarter, and its FY26 RoNW of 9.75% is below Data Patterns’ 17.00%. Paying a peer-like multiple means assuming the FY26 dip reverses, which the order book and the delayed export order will need to show.

Where Tonbo fits in the October 15 IPO rush

Tonbo is one of four mainboard issues opening on the same day. Financial Express reported that Zetwerk, Bonfiglioli Transmissions, Tonbo Imaging and Sahajanand Medical Technologies together aim to raise over ₹8,873 crore, all closing on October 19 and listing on October 23. Tonbo is the second smallest of the four by issue size, ahead of Sahajanand’s ₹475.48 crore.

The company’s history before this IPO also matters. Inc42 reported that Tonbo first filed draft papers with SEBI in December 2025, received approval in July 2026 and then refiled a fresh draft prospectus in August. The RHP states the company was incorporated in 2003, and it says Tonbo has supplied products to customers across 24 countries as of June 30, 2026. Grey-market premium quotes for the stock are unofficial and have varied widely between trackers, so they are not a reliable guide to listing day.

What a retail applicant should weigh

For a retail applicant, the arithmetic is simple. One lot of 21 shares costs ₹14,700 at the cap, and the retail category covers bids up to ₹2 lakh, so the most a retail investor can apply for is 13 lots, or 273 shares worth ₹1,91,100, by our calculation. Retail bidders can bid at the cut-off price, which keeps the application valid wherever the final price is fixed within the band, though the amount blocked is at the ₹700 cap (RHP).

The harder question is the business itself. Tonbo gives listed exposure to electro-optics and thermal imaging, a niche corner of Indian defence technology, and its anchor book pulled in large domestic and foreign funds. On the other side of the ledger, revenue fell 22.69% in FY26, the June quarter was loss-making, exports all but vanished, the customer base is concentrated, and working capital has stretched to 517 days, all according to the company’s own RHP. At about 79 times FY26 earnings, the price assumes a recovery that the reported numbers don’t show yet.

Before you bid, read the RHP’s risk factors section in full, track day-wise subscription data on the exchanges, and be clear whether you want a listing-day trade or a long-term holding. The case for each is different. For the day’s market backdrop, see our Stock Market Today India hub. This post is for information only and is not a recommendation to subscribe.