6 days ago
Redditor Finds Father's Forgotten JSW Steel Shares, Becomes Multi-Millionaire Overnight
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A Redditor found old share certificates worth Rs 1 lakh from 1990, now valued at Rs 85 crore due to investments in Jindal Vijayanagar Steel, which merged with JSW Steel
In a story that sounds straight out of a movie script, a man's casual house cleaning led to the discovery of a forgotten treasure; not gold or jewels, but old share certificates purchased by his father over three decades ago. The once-dismissed papers have now revealed a windfall worth over Rs 80 crore.
Saurabh Dutta, who shared the man's experience on social media, said that the Redditor stumbled upon a set of 35-year-old documents while cleaning his house. Initially assuming they were useless, a closer inspection revealed they were share certificates from the 1990s; investments made by his father worth Rs 1 lakh at the time.
Those shares, bought in Jindal Vijayanagar Steel Limited, turned out to be an unexpected goldmine. The company, which later merged with JSW Steel in 2005, underwent a significant transformation that multiplied the value of its shares dramatically over the years.
The man's father had originally purchased 5,000 shares of the company. After the merger, those shares converted to 80,000 JSW Steel shares, and following a stock split in 2017 (in a 1:10 ratio), the holding ballooned to 8 lakh shares.
See the viral post here:
With JSW Steel currently trading at around Rs 1,000 per share, the total value of this forgotten investment now stands at Rs 80 crore. But that's not all; dividends paid out by JSW Steel over the years further boost the total return.
For instance, in 2022 alone, JSW issued a dividend of Rs 17.30 per share, which would amount to Rs 1.38 crore on the man's current holdings. Accounting for dividends distributed over the last three decades, the man estimates an additional Rs 5 crore, pushing the overall value of the rediscovered investment to an astonishing Rs 85 crore.
The story has quickly gone viral on social media, with users chiming in with congratulations, questions, and tax advice. One user joked, 'You'll have to pay 30% tax on that Rs 80 crore." Another reminisced, 'My father earned Rs 800 per month in 1993 so Rs 1 lakh investment back then meant you were super rich." Some pointed out that the original investment likely came during the company's IPO in the late 1990s.
The dramatic surge in share value is attributed to key corporate events. The 2005 merger gave Jindal Vijayanagar Steel shareholders 16 JSW Steel shares for every 1 they held. The 2017 stock split then increased the share count tenfold, dramatically enhancing the value of legacy holdings like the viral Redditor's.
