IHS Holding Ltd. stumbled out of the gate Thursday, as the telecommunications infrastructure operator’s stock opened and closed well below the initial public offering (IPO) price on the first day of trading.
The company said overnight that its IPO priced at $21 a share, at the bottom of the expected range of between $21 and $24 a share.
The stock’s first trade was at $17.65 at 11:54 a.m. Eastern for 1.6 million shares, or 16.0% below the IPO price, to value the company at about $5.8 billion.
The stock, then traded within a range of $16.83 and $18.48 per share for the day and closed at $17 per share.
Volume came in at 10.613 million shares traded.
IHS is the largest independent multinational emerging-market-only tower operator and one of the largest independent multinational tower operators globally, in each case by tower count.
As of June 30, 2021, the firm operated 30,207 Towers across five countries in Africa, three countries in Latin America and one country in the Middle East.
IHS owned 16,522 towers in Nigeria its largest market as at June 2021, its second largest market was Brazil where it owned 4,350 towers in the same period.