Kapruka debuts on CSE today

Shares of Kapruka Holdings will commence trading on the Main Board of the Colombo Stock Exchange under the symbol ‘KPHL’ today.

Analysts expect heavy trading for the counter, as investors, who missed out due to the oversubscription of the issue, rush to meet their portfolio allocation requirements. 

Kapruka Holdings is the holding company of Kapruka, Sri Lanka’s pioneering ecommerce platform with a global presence. 

The company offered 32,826,000 ordinary voting shares, or a 20% stake in the company, to the public through its much-anticipated IPO, which was oversubscribed 5.8 times.

The issue, managed by Acuity Partners, was quickly snapped up by savvy investors at a per-share price of Rs. 15.40. 

A salient feature of the share allocation was that all ‘retail investors’ were given their allocations in full to make up the 40% mandatory allotment while the 10% reserved for the Unit Trusts too was allotted up to 96%. Accordingly, a total of 164,130,360 ordinary voting shares have been listed, giving Kapruka Holdings an initial market capitalisation of Rs. 2.5 billion. 

Kapruka is Sri Lanka’s first and largest locally-owned e-commerce enterprise, founded in 2002 by Dulith Herath.