BRITISH personal computer (PC) maker Raspberry Pi shares jumped on its first day as a public company, offering a boost to London’s struggling market for new stock listings.
Shares of the Cambridge-based company closed on Tuesday‘s (Jun 11) session at 385 pence each, a 38 per cent surge from its initial public offering price (IPO) of 280 pence. The stock gained as much as 43 per cent during intraday trading from the pricing of its £166 million (S$286 million) IPO.
The brisk first-day performance offers a glimmer of hope for the London market, which has struggled in recent years to attract technology companies to list. Raspberry Pi is the first tech firm that raised US$100 million or more in London since video game maker Devolver Digital went public in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The Raspberry Pi IPO provided “a much needed quality injection into the UK capital markets, and hopefully, this proves to be a catalyst for future listings of innovative British businesses domestically”, said Adam Montanaro, a fund manager at Montanaro Asset Management who bought into the offering.
The company, which makes low-cost computers popular among hobbyists and educators, had a market capitalisation of about £542 million. Its IPO was oversubscribed by multiple times and the pricing came at the top end of a marketed range, suggesting strong demand for its shares.
The new listing is the biggest in London since cross-border payments firm Cab Payments Holdings floated in July 2023. The city has fallen behind in this year’s IPO revival, with the UK exchange accounting for about 2 per cent of about US$13 billion raised in IPOs in Europe this year.
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The London Stock Exchange was dealt a blow last year when British chip designer Arm Holdings decided to sell shares in New York. It’s also losing tech listings at a faster pace, with cybersecurity firm Darktrace agreeing to be sold to private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
Among the technology-focused companies that went public in London since 2021, few have seen positive returns. Shares of video-game company TinyBuild slumped by 97 per cent since its 2021 IPO, while semiconductor specialist Alphawave IP Group fell by almost two-thirds.
Raspberry Pi could offer a boost to sentiment towards the UK tech scene, but given the small IPO size and limited free float, “it unfortunately does not leave too much room for excitement”, said Ben Barringer, an analyst at Quilter Cheviot.
“There is a long way to go before the UK can be seen to be recovering, but hopefully this IPO helps to encourage other tech founders to consider this route to market,” he said.
Raspberry Pi was previously reported to be considering a listing in early 2022. Since then, it raised money from British chipmaker Arm and Sony Group’s semiconductor division.
Arm was committed to buying US$35 million worth of shares in the IPO, while UK asset manager Lansdowne Partners agreed to purchase as much as US$20 million, according to the prospectus.
Raspberry Pi is known for its cheap single-board computers that can be programmed to run different tasks. It sold 7.4 million devices last year and is expecting to sell 8.4 million this year. BLOOMBERG
