SK Biopharmaceuticals CEO Cho Jeong-woo expresses his gratitude during the bio firm’s stock market listing ceremony at the KRX headquarters building in Seoul on Thursday. (KRX)
SK Biopharmaceuticals, the largest initial public offering of this year so far, continued to perform strong Friday, soaring to a daily limit of 30 percent in the second trading session.
The bio unit of South Korean conglomerate SK Group began trading at 127,000 won ($105.75) per share, then spiked 38,000 won, or 29.92 percent, to reach 165,000 won in early trading hours.
Throughout the trading day, the stock price continuously maintained, while marking its market capitalization of more than 12.92 trillion won, becoming the 22nd most-valued stock on the nation’s main bourse Kospi, at the closing bell.
A day earlier, the listed firm made its grand debut on Kospi, recording a market value worth nearly 9.95 trillion won, becoming the 27th most-valued stock at the closing bell.
Market watchers attributed the soaring stock price of the drug developer to the limited amount of shares that are available for trading. While the number of the firm’s listed shares came in at some 78.3 million, only 15.6 million shares, or 20 percent of the total, are tradable.
Prior to its IPO, investors were highly enthusiastic about the drug developer and chipped in 30.98 trillion won as deposit payments for the shares. The figure was the highest since Cheil Industries’ IPO in 2014 that garnered 30.06 trillion won in deposit payments.
“Due to the small amount of tradable shares, SK Biopharmaceuticals has jumped up for two days straight. Investors are so eager to buy them but no one wants to sell their stocks,” said Han Byung-hwa, an analyst at Eugene Investment & Securities, while adding that it is difficult to evaluate the firm’s fundamentals regarding its stock price.
By Jie Ye-eun (
yeeun@heraldcorp.com)