WNAM REPORT: Tokyo Metro Co. shares made a strong debut Wednesday on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, with the opening price 35.8 percent above the offering price of 1,200 yen ($7.9) in the country’s biggest initial public offering in six years, as per reports.
Shares of Asia’s oldest subway operator drew massive buy orders, and it took around an hour after the market opening to achieve an initial price of 1,630 yen on the TSE’s top-tier Prime Market.
The stock price of the country’s second-largest railway company by passenger volume briefly surged as high as 1,768 yen during the morning session, sending its market capitalization above 1 trillion yen.
The subway operator raised 348.6 billion yen in the IPO, with the central government and the Tokyo government selling half of their respective holdings of 53.4 percent and 46.6 percent at 1,200 yen per share.
The central government will use its proceeds from the sale of Tokyo Metro shares to repay bonds issued to fund reconstruction efforts following the devastating earthquake and ensuing tsunami that struck northeastern Japan in March 2011.
Tokyo Metro was formed in 2004 from a public sector-backed entity as part of privatization efforts, though all of its shares had been held by the central and metropolitan governments.
Both the market cap and the value of the share offering are the highest in Japan since SoftBank Group Corp. in December 2018 listed its telecom unit, whose market value totaled 7.18 trillion yen, according to data provider Dealogic. SoftBank Group raised 2.65 trillion yen in Japan’s biggest-ever IPO.
Tokyo Metro operates nine subway lines connecting 180 stations across the capital and carried 1.9 billion passengers in the year ended March 2022, the second highest after East Japan Railway Co. Its operations also include real estate, retail and telecommunications businesses.
