PPC shares tumble 5 percent
Shares of state-owned electricity giant Public Power Corporation (PPC) yesterday tumbled 5.04 percent on their debut on the Athens bourse. Neither the incentive of an extra share for every 10 held by retail investors for at least six months nor the interdiction to PPC personnel to sell their shares for six months prevented the stocks slide from its IPO price of 12.70 euros to 12.32 euros by the end of the session. Both retail investors and PPC employees had bought shares at a discount. The State offered about 16 percent of PPC to institutional and retail investors. PPC lost the monopoly of electricity production earlier this year but retains the monopoly of distribution. It is valued at nearly 3 billion euros. A total of 20,905,755 shares of the 232 million floated on the ASE changed hands yesterday. Of these, almost 18,300,000 shares changed hands in eight block transfers, six of which contained at least 2 million shares each (and which changed hands at the opening price) and two of 819,230 shares each. The remaining shares, about 2.3 million were traded by retail investors, a volume considered too thin for such a large company by most experts. There was speculation that holders of state convertible certificates (prometoha) may have sold massively in order to make a small profit; at the end, however, the decline was too high and anyone who traded at the closing price barely broke even.
