Tamin Cement Investment Company, the largest construction holding in Iran, went public on Wednesday offering 15% of its shares in an initial public offering.
Stakes comprised 1.65 billion shares, 1.32 billion of which were sold to the public and the rest to investment funds.
The IPO was warmly received by investors with close to 4.5 million taking part, a figure never seen in Iran’s bourse history, thanks to the rising number of new investors.
Buyers could purchase 294 shares each. The company raised close to 26 trillion rials ($136 million) from the IPO.
The company was listed with the Tehran Stock Exchange making it the 337th company listed company, the Securities and Exchange News Agency reported.
Tamin Cement added 173.25 trillion rials ($900 million) to the TSE capitalization.
After the price discovery carried out through book-building method, shares were traded at 15,750 a piece. Book-building is a process by which an underwriter attempts to determine the price at which an IPO will be offered. Price discovery involves recording investor demand for shares before arriving at an issue price.
Tamin Cement is one of major subsidiaries of the Social Security Investment Company of Iran, known by its Persian acronym Shasta.
Shasta controls nine holdings in a wide range of sectors, including petroleum, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, cement, transportation and finance. The holdings manage about 200 subsidiaries.
Tamin is a major holding in the cement, construction and transportation sectors. It directly and indirectly holds stakes in 45 companies, 26 of which are already listed, according to Mohammad Rezvani, the managing director.
The giant company is said to account for 30% of the total cement production in the country.
On Tuesday, the Economy Minister Farhad Dejpasand spoke about an agreement with Shasta based on which 21 subsidiaries of the major investment holding will be listed in the coming weeks.
