China’s Ab&B Bio-Tech shares soar 170% driven by retail demand

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By Scott Murdoch and Donny Kwok

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Shares of China’s Ab&B Bio-Tech gained nearly 170% on Monday, as the vaccine development firm debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after it raised $55 million in an initial public offering.

The retail tranche of the IPO was nearly 4,000 times oversubscribed by investors, the company’s filings showed.

The share hit a high of HK$34.80 in early trade, with about 7.68 million Ab&B Bio-Tech shares worth HK$253.8 million ($32.33 million) changing hands on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The Hang Seng Index was up 0.2% on Monday.

Ab&B Bio-Tech, which is developing influenza and rabies vaccines, sold 33.44 million shares at HK$12.90 each, according to the filings.

The price set was at the bottom of the range flagged to investors when the deal was launched.

The strong demand from Hong Kong’s retail investors meant 651,600 shares due to be sold to institutional investors were re-allocated to those public investors, the filings showed.

There were nearly 192,000 applications from retail investors to buy stock and 18,984 of those were allocated shares.

Despite the retail buying, weak demand from institutions meant the institutional portion of the deal was only just covered.

($1 = 7.8498 Hong Kong dollars)

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch and Donny Kwok; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Jacqueline Wong)