(Bloomberg) -- British bootmaker Dr. Martens Plc jumped as much as 18% as it began to trade in London after owner Permira Holdings and other shareholders raised 1.3 billion pounds ($1.8 billion) in the U.K.’s largest domestic initial public offering since September.
The shares climbed 17% to 432.10 pence at 8:08 a.m. in London from the IPO price of 370 pence. The IPO priced 350 million existing shares at the top end of an initial range, the company said in a statement Friday. It values Dr. Martens at 3.7 billion pounds, which is more than 10 times the 300 million pounds Permira paid for the bootmaker in 2014.
Dr. Martens’ is the largest IPO in London by a U.K. company since online shopping emporium THG Plc raised 1.88 billion pounds ($2.4 billion) in September, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Griggs family, which sold Dr. Martens to Permira, and employees and directors of the company also held shares in the company before the IPO. About 35% of the company’s shares are available for trading.
Shareholders can sell another 53 million shares if there’s enough demand, which would increase the size of the offering to 1.49 billion pounds.
Several other IPO candidates are taking advantage of a lockdown-fueled online shopping boom. Poland’s InPost SA, which operates automated parcel lockers, soared in its Amsterdam trading debut Wednesday, while virtual greeting-card company Moonpig Group Plc and used-car platform Auto1 Group SE are taking investor orders for public offerings.
The pandemic has accelerated the shift from brick-and-mortar stores to online portals, with physical stores increasingly forced to close down due to reduced footfall. Dr. Martens’ e-commerce platform brought in nearly a fifth of its revenue in the year ending March 2020, up from just 7% in 2015.
The company had secured cornerstone investments of 250 million pounds from BlackRock Inc (NYSE:BLK)., 100 million pounds from Janus Henderson Group (NYSE:JHG) Plc and 75 million pounds from Merian Global Investors.
The deal gathered enough investor interest to cover all the shares on offer within about an hour of opening its order book. Dr. Martens accelerated the IPO timeline, closing its offering two days earlier than originally planned.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS). and Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) are joint global coordinators, while Barclays (LON:BARC) Plc, BofA Securities, HSBC Holdings Plc (LON:HSBA) and Royal Bank of Canada will be joint bookrunners in the event the offer proceeds. Lazard (NYSE:LAZ) & Co. is the company’s financial adviser.