MADRID (Reuters) – Demand from investors covered all the shares offered by Hotelbeds owner HBX Group in its initial public offering within hours, the bookrunner said on Friday, ahead of what is set to be the largest listing in Europe so far this year.
The Spanish travel technology company said on Thursday it intended to raise 725 million euros ($752.6 million) by selling new shares that would start trading on the Spanish stock market on Feb. 13.
The demand also covered the so-called ‘greenshoe option’, an additional number of shares potentially offered to investors if demand is strong enough, the bookrunner said on Friday.
The company has set a price range for its shares between 10.50 euros and 12.50 euros, which would give the whole company a market value of between 2.66 billion euros and 3.03 billion euros, according to Reuters calculations based on the IPO prospectus.
The private equity-owned company has been planning an IPO for more than a year, Reuters has reported previously, and has recently been sounding out investors.
HBX’s shareholders include private equity firms Cinven and EQT, and Canada’s CPP Investments. Existing shareholders intend to sell existing shares worth about 25 million euros combined, the company has said.
HBX Group would be the first to launch a European IPO this year after a slight recovery in issuance last year.
That saw cosmetics and fashion group Puig and private equity fund CVC raising more than 2 billion euros respectively in Madrid and Amsterdam, but Europastry cancelling its market debut due to market instability.
($1 = 0.9633 euros)
(Reporting by Inti Landauro, Jesus Aguado and Tomas Cobos, editing by Aislinn Laing and Jan Harvey)
