Hapag-Lloyd IPO closes without fireworks
After several months of tweaks and setbacks, Hapag-Lloyd’s initial public offering launched on the Frankfurt and Hamburg stock exchanges today but saw a disappointing performance, with shares advancing in value by just 0.55% between market open and close.
The stock opened at €20.05 per share, but fell back to its issue price of €20.00 within minutes, before rebounding to the day’s high of €20.38 at around 09:35hrs (local time).
Today’s total trading volume was around 1,612,363 shares, worth around €32,505,238 based on the closing price of €20.16 per share.
The Germany-based container line had initially set out to raise €500m from the listing but readjusted the target to €300m last week in response to “ongoing market volatility”.
On Wednesday, the carrier priced the IPO at €20.00 per share, at the lowest end of its €20-€22 bookbuilding range.
The offering itself consisted of a total of up to 13,228,677 shares at the offer price, a slight reduction on the 15.7m shares mooted previously, which had included 11.5m in new stock.
In addition, up to 1,984,301 shares owned by Hapag-Lloyd’s major shareholder TUI-Hapag Beteiligungs (TUI) were allotted to cover potential over allotments, but TUI did not have an additional shares placement option. The arrangement effectively blocked TUI from selling any of its existing 14% holding, except to cover excess demand.
Hapag-Lloyd’s major shareholders Kühne Maritime and Compañía Sud Americana de Vapores (CSAV) earlier committed themselves to each buying tranches of shares worth $30m (around 1.4m shares each, based on €20 per share).
“It was a tough fight,” Rolf Habben Jansen, CEO of Hapag-Lloyd, told reporters as the market opened in Frankfurt. In a statement released this morning, the CEO said the company was “satisfied with the interest of investors and the demand for our shares”.