Drinks maker Stock Spirits has traded lower on its London stock market debut, after pricing its shares at the mid-point of its target range in a sale which valued the company at £470m sterling.
The British based-firm, the biggest vodka producer in Poland and the Czech Republic, said majority-owner Oaktree Capital Management and management had raised £206.5m from the offering.
The company also raised £52m from the sale of new shares to pay down debt.
Stock Spirits priced the sale of a 55% stake at 235 pence per share, the middle of its original 210-260 pence range.
The shares opened at the offer price, before hitting a high of 240 pence. But in the first few minutes of trade, they retreated and fell by 4.3%.
By the close of business the shares stood at 226p - 3.8% lower than their flotation price.
The initial offer price valued Stock Spirits at a multiple of around 6.9 times 2012 core earnings, a significant discount to larger international groups such as Diageo and Pernod which have trailing price to earnings multiples of 18.5 and 18.3 times respectively, according to Thomson Reuters data.
Stock Spirits, whose drinks range from high-end Polish vodka Czysta de Luxe to fruit-flavoured liqueurs and Spanish brandies, was established in 2007 when Oaktree merged Czech business Stock with its Polish counterpart Polmos Lublin, which the private equity group had acquired a year earlier.
Oaktree looked at selling the company in 2011, pursuing a possible deal with the world's biggest spirits group Diageo and then later considering a listing on the Warsaw bourse before eventually deciding to keep hold of it.
Following the listing, Oaktree will hold a 38.3%, although this could fall further if an over-allotment option is exercised, allowing the offer size to be increased by 15% if there is strong demand.
