The company’s chairman, Seyit Mehmet Buğa, and Capital Markets Board (SPK) President Vedat Akgiray rang the opening bell yesterday signifying İttifak Holding’s first day of trading on the İMKB, listed as ITTFH.
The company went public with a base price of TL 58.50 but showed poor performance during trading, hitting the minimum price of 52.50 by falling 10 percent and ending trading of the stock before the closing of the first session.
The ISE-100 index rose 2.5 percent to 52,961 at the end of the first session of trading amid an announcement by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Wednesday that an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had been reached over a stand-by deal.
On the İMKB trading floor, Akgiray spoke about İttifak’s IPO, adding that this is the fourth public offering this year after more than a yearlong dry spell in companies willing to publicly list their shares. “We hope we will have a new company joining our ranks every day of 2010,” Akgiray added. Making a tongue-in-cheek comment, he noted that there is a “new rule” for publicly listed firms: “If you aren’t growing 10 percent monthly, then we will stop the trading of your stock.”
Buğa, speaking at the event, revealed that İttifak currently represents 18 firms with 19,000 partners and more than 5,000 employees, and said that he believed joining the stock exchange would bring great value to the company and contribute to its growth. He added that with this IPO, he would work towards contributing to the Turkish economy by passing the TL 1 billion mark for the company’s turnover.
İttifak, which operates in the shopping center, food, machinery and construction sectors, currently expects to end the year with a TL 770 million turnover.
