After going public on the Jamaica Stock Exchange’s (JSE) Junior Market on January 14 (last Friday), investors came out in droves with more than 800 bids and $150 million to purchase shares of Spur Tree Spices Jamaica Limited in the first listing of 2022.

Spur Tree’s price closed 32 per cent higher to $1.32 which values the company at $2.21 billion in market capitalisation. After halting as the market opened at 9:30 am from three units trading at $1.30, Spur Tree ended the day with 17 trades and $74,671.02 in value traded. This was due to the JSE circuit breaker limiting the stock from going any higher.

Even as some orders expired during the day, $146.76 million across 528 bids was still present while there was less than $5.86 million across 75 sell orders remained. With a reference price of $1.32, Spur Tree could possibly go to $1.75 on its second day of trading tomorrow.

Spur Tree’s initial public offering closed two days after opening on December 31 where it was able to raise $335.39 million in fresh equity capital. Though more than half of the offer was available for subscription to the general public at $1 per share, the basis of allotment only saw investors being guaranteed the first 10,000 units and 11.76 per cent on the remaining balance due to $1.3 billion in subscriptions.

— By David Rose