Bottoms up: Fever-Tree share price fizzes in first day of trading
Doubles all round at posh tonic water maker Fever-Tree: shares in the company started trading on Aim this morning, jumping as high at 172p within minutes of the market opening, before settling back to 168.5p.
Shares were priced at 134p when it listed a 60 per cent stake under the ticker "FEVR", which raised £93.3m, valuing the company at £154m.
The drinks maker was founded by Tim Warrillow and former Plymouth Gin director Charles Rolls to create a tonic water to match the various upmarket gins developed by the likes of Sipsmith in recent years. Fever-Tree also supplies premium mixers such as Sicilian lemonade, elderflower tonic water and ginger beer.
The IPO is one of the first since market turbulence in October caused Virgin Money, Aldermore and webuyanycar.com owner BCA to postpone their flotation plans.
But this week Virgin Money revived its IPO, saying a calmer market had given it more confidence. Yesterday City A.M. revealed bankers are likely to exercise their "greenshoe" option when it lists later this month.
In an interview with City A.M. this week, Rolls revealed turbulence on the markets had also given Fever-Tree second thoughts about the IPO.
Half way through the process, we heard it was a bad idea to float a business of our size.We did put in a couple of calls to Investec, but they were very confident all the way along. They said we would get a lot of blue chip investors, come what may in the markets.