Shares in Italian yacht maker Ferretti end flat in Hong Kong debut

HONG KONG (Reuters) – Shares in Italian yacht maker Ferretti SpA ended flat in their Hong Kong debut on Thursday after raising $244 million at a time when the Asian financial hub has seen a slump in the value of initial public offerings (IPOs).

The stock opened at HK$23.05, hit a high of HK$23.75, and closed at the intraday low of HK$22.85, down 0.1% from the offering price of HK$22.88 apiece with 8.02 million shares changing hands.

That compared to a 1.1% drop in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

“(The company) is unique, but investors do not know much about this segment and they are not keen to go for it,” said Steven Leung, a sales director at UOB Kay Hian.

“Flat performance is more or less expected when appetite for big IPOs is not particularly strong at the moment.”

The yacht maker, which is owned by Chinese conglomerate Weichai Group and whose brands include Riva, Pershing and Wally, said on Wednesday it had pocketed a net HK$1.77 billion ($226 million) after pricing the IPO near the bottom of its target range.

Ferretti is a market leader for yachts measuring at least 80 feet, with a price tag ranging from 4 million euros ($4.5 million) to more than 20 million euros. Its customers include British fashion designer Jimmy Choo and former football star David Beckham.

The group sold 83.58 million shares, or 25% of its enlarged share capital, in the offering. The Hong Kong portion was 1.07 times oversubscribed, while demand for the international offering totalled more than twice the amount on sale, it said.

Italian investors led by Milanese asset manager Banca Mediolanum bought into Ferretti’s Hong Kong IPO, which saw Chinese investors take the lion’s share, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

Chinese firms Sunshine Insurance, Sanya Development Holdings, Hainan Free Trade Port Fund, Hainan Financial Holdings and Haifa Holding acted as cornerstone investors, taking 53% of the offering, Ferretti said.

(Reporting by Donny Kwok; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Sherry Jacob-Phillips and Jan Harvey)