Emperador Finishes Higher in Singapore After Secondary Listing

Shares of Manila-listed Emperador Inc., the world’s largest maker of brandy, advanced in Singapore after a listing which did not raise new funds.

The shares finished at S$0.45 ($0.32) each, after opening at S$0.435. That is in line with the stock price in the Philippines, where shares climbed to 18.10 pesos ($0.32) each on Thursday.

The company opted for a secondary listing by way of introduction, joining a slew of Asian companies that chose the same mechanism to list in Hong Kong and Singapore earlier this year. Such listings, which do not involve selling new shares, tend to be quicker and cheaper than a traditional share sale.

Initially, Emperador was said to have explored raising as much as S$1 billion with an offering in Singapore, Bloomberg News reported last year.

The company doesn’t need to raise money at the moment as it has a strong balance sheet that is enough to fund growth, according to Bryan Donaghey, Emperador’s head of whisky business. There are no plans to sell new shares for now, he said during an event in Singapore on Thursday.

The liquor producer will maintain its primary listing on the Philippine bourse, it said in a press release earlier this week. Meanwhile, the secondary listing will “expand opportunities for participation by investors in Singapore and beyond,” Chief Executive Officer Winston Co. said on July 11.

There were 27 companies with a secondary listing in Singapore as of end June, according to the exchange’s website. Singapore’s bourse may see 30 to 40 first-time and secondary listings annually within the next five years, Pol de Win, SGX’s head of global sales and origination, said in an interview last month.

UBS AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were joint managers in Emperador’s secondary listing.