DUBLIN: Cairn Homes Plc expected to raise about 385 million euros ($437 million) from the company’s initial public offering after pricing shares at 1 euro each.
The shares, listed on the London Stock Exchange, were up 5.8 percent at about 1.06 euros at 8:20 a.m. That gave the company a market value of about 454 million euros.
Irish property developers eschewed equity markets to rely on debt financing for projects as house prices quadrupled in the decade to 2007. That resulted in a mountain of bad debt when the property bubble burst. Developers have been slow to accept the need for equity backing as the market rebounds, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said in March.
“The Cairn business model is unique in Ireland and will enable us to build quality homes in areas of particular need at a time of significant undersupply,” Michael Stanley, Cairn’s chief executive officer, said in a statement Wednesday.
The homebuilder is working on developments in Dublin, Galway and Meath, north of the capital, according to its website. Home prices, which fell by more than half during the crisis, rose 15.8 percent in April from the same month last year, the Central Statistics Office said. Still, values remain 37.8 percent below their 2007 peak.
