Hot stock: HRnetGroup rises above IPO price on debut day

THE counter of homegrown recruitment agency HRnetGroup rose as much as 6.7 per cent to S$0.96 on Friday morning on its first day of trading, above its initial public offering (IPO) price of S$0.90 per share.

At 11.28am, it was trading at S$0.925.

Earlier this month, it had launched a S$174 million IPO on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) mainboard for about 193.4 million shares.

On Friday, Adeline Sim, the company's executive director, said: "We are very encouraged by the overwhelming response to our offering from cornerstone investors, institutional investors and the investing public... This IPO will be an inflexion point for the group, as up to 404 additional employees will become co-owners whose interests would be to drive our growth to the next level and achieve profit leadership in every city we operate in.

"Coupled with the war chest from the IPO proceeds for business expansion and possible opportunistic acquisitions, we are very excited about the group's growth prospects."

HRnetGroup is the first recruitment agency to list on the SGX mainboard.