Is Nykaa trying to prop up its share price?

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Editor's note: Shares of FSN E-Commerce Ventures, parent of cosmetics retailer Nykaa, are trading at around Rs 175 apiece, a sixth of their cum-bonus price. And rightly so, as the bonus issue was announced in the ratio of five shares for every one share held by investors. The timing of the bonus issue coincides with another important event that will have a bearing on the company’s stock—the release of locked-in shares of its pre-IPO subscribers. During the year-long lock-in following the IPO, promoters and investors were barred from liquidating the securities held by them. When the bonus was first announced in October, the company had fixed the record date as 3 November. That meant that shareholders would, on that day, be entitled to the bonus shares and the stock would start trading ex-bonus the same day on the bourses. But then FSN E-Commerce, without any clarification, changed the record date to 11 November, to coincide with the day the locked-in shares could be traded on the market. Conspiracy theories began doing the rounds. In a long thread, investment analysts that go by …