MILAN/LONDON, Feb 10 (Reuters) – Shares in Italy’s EuroGroup Laminations , a maker of components for electric motors, jumped as much as 7% on Friday before falling back, as they started trading in Milan in Europe’s second major initial public offering (IPO) this year.
EuroGroup priced shares in the IPO at 5.50 euros ($5.91) each, giving it a market value of around 922 million euros. By 1110 GMT the shares had pared gains and were 0.8% above their offer price at 5.54 euros, outperforming a 0.3% drop in Italy’s all-share index (.FTITLMS).
“We had the foresight of focusing on the environmental challenge and catching the energy transition train,” EuroGroup CEO Marco Arduini told the listing ceremony at the Milan bourse, which is owned by Euronext .
Arduini said that more than 50% of electric cars sold in North America and Europe use EuroGroup components.
“Our order portfolio, which we’ll work through over the next few years, amounts to more than 5 billion euros,” he added.
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The float raised as much as 432 million euros for EuroGroup and its shareholders, Euro Management Services – an investment vehicle owned by the company’s founding families – and Tikehau Capital (TKOO.PA), bringing onboard some 140 new shareholders.
The listing of EuroGroup, which follows that of German web-hosting firm IONOS earlier this week, was seen as a potential icebreaker for the frozen IPO market.
Deals dried up last year as share prices plunged on dimming economic prospects due to rising inflation and the war in Ukraine.
The company plans to invest the 250 million euros of fresh capital raised through the listing into expanding its geographical footprint and developing new technologies, as well as potential “external growth opportunities”.
Tikehau Capital co-founders Antoine Flamarion and Mathieu Chabran said in a statement that the success of the IPO illustrates the increasing demand from institutional investors for opportunities such as these.
Tikehau Capital has reduced its stake to about 8.5% through the offering.
EuroGroup’s float is the biggest in Italy since De Nora’s IPO in June last year, when the electrode maker braved markets to fetch a valuation of 2.7 billion euros.
It has fared better in the aftermarket than Germany’s IONOS, which priced its IPO at the bottom of the range earlier this week and whose stock was down 10% from the IPO price on Friday.
($1 = 0.9315 euros)
(This story has been refiled to correct misspelling in paragraph 2)
Reporting by Pablo Mayo Cerqueiro in London; Elisa Anzolin and Valentina Za in Milan; Editing by Susan Fenton and Sharon Singleton
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