Hela Apparel IPO oversubscribed on opening day

The initial public offering (IPO) of Hela Apparel Holdings Limited (Hela Clothing), one of the largest IPOs ever in Sri Lanka, received an overwhelmingly positive response, being oversubscribed within hours of the offer opening, yesterday.

Having successfully raised Rs.4 billion in equity capital for Hela Clothing, the offer closed at 4:30 p.m. the same day. But due to a technical fault of the online portal of the issue, the company said the subscription list was kept open till yesterday midnight to allow the company to accept applications from applicants who had already made payments to the Hela bank account before 4:30 p.m. yesterday.

Huge interest was witnessed from across a spectrum of investors, with both local and foreign individuals, institutions and non-retail investors eagerly subscribing to the issue, a press release issued by the company said.

Expressing his sentiments, Hela Clothing Group CEO Dilanka Jinadasa said, “We are truly overwhelmed and grateful for the interest shown by the public for our IPO. We have already begun work to execute our IPO plans with a keen focus on our value creation journey ahead.”

The issue, jointly managed by CAL and CT CLSA, witnessed a 20 percent stake in the company or 267,108,998 ordinary voting shares being offered to the public, at a per share price of Rs.15.