The admission to trading follows a successful initial public offering (IPO) by the company which ended on November 5 and set a Latvian record for the intensity of investor activity.
Virši raised 7.8 million euros through the IPO, in which a total of 9,979 investors participated, including 15 institutional investors. Among the investors in the shares, almost half, or 4,732, are from Latvia, while 5,128 are from Estonia and 97 are from Lithuania.
The Chairman of the Management Board of Virši Jānis Vība, the Head of Institutional Markets at LHV Bank Ivars Bergmanis, and the CEO of Nasdaq Riga and the Head of Nasdaq Baltic Exchanges Daiga Auziņa-Melalksne rang the symbolic opening bell of the stock exchange on the morning of the Virši shares’ first day of trading.
“We welcome Virši to Nasdaq Riga and to the Baltic First North market,” said Daiga Auziņa-Melalksne, the CEO of Nasdaq Riga and Head of the Nasdaq Baltic Market. “The First North market is a growth platform for ambitious companies like Virši and we are excited to see that so many investors want to be part of their growth story. We wish them the success as their journey as a public company begins.”
"A successful start on the stock exchange is both the end of a long period of preparation and the beginning of a new operational phase, now in the official status of a public company. We are grateful to every investor for their interest in the initial public offering of our shares. Almost 7,500 investors or nearly 75% of all investors have bought a hundred or more shares,” said Jānis Vība, the Chairman of the Management Board of Virši.
The Nasdaq First North market is designed to support smaller, growing companies that want to raise capital and get the visibility and credibility of being a public company. For investors, First North offers an opportunity to invest in companies that are at an earlier stage of their growth.
AS Virši-A operates a network of more than 63 service stations, of which 61 are full-service, and employs more than 627 people in all regions of Latvia.
