By Emma-Victoria Farr, Joice Alves and Shadia Nasralla
LONDON (Reuters) -Ithaca Energy shares dipped on their London debut on Wednesday after the North Sea oil and gas producer defied volatile markets to deliver Britain’s largest initial public offering (IPO) this year, and Europe’s fifth biggest.
The shares opened 2% below the 250 pence per share issue price and briefly fell by as much as 4% to a low of 240.05 pence, before recovering to 246.35 pence, down 1.5%.
At the same time, the pan-European STOXX 600 was down 0.09% and an index of European oil and gas stocks was down 0.7%.
The IPO price tag gave an initial valuation of 2.45 billion pounds ($2.83 billion) for the company, slightly less than originally expected.
Ithaca raised proceeds of 288 million pounds amid a drought of stock market listings this year, with global IPO proceeds down more than 70% compared with the same time last year, according to Dealogic data.
The London stock exchange has suffered the worst year on record for UK IPOs as market volatility persists amid the energy crisis and worsening economic forecasts.
Proceeds from UK shares sales have dropped 95% so far this year and only two out of 38 listings in Britain have been in the utility and energy sector, amounting to a mere $5 million from an overall $910 million raised in the region year to date, according to Dealogic data.
($1 = 0.8649 pounds)
(Reporting by Emma-Victoria Farr, Joice Alves, Shadia Nasralla and Lucy Raitano; Editing by Amanda Cooper and Mark Potter)
