Mercari Makes Strong Debut on Tokyo Stock Market

June 19, 2018

Tokyo- Shares of Japanese online flea market operator Mercari Inc.  made a strong debut on the Tokyo Stock Exchange's Mothers market for startups on Tuesday, closing at 5,300 yen each, 77 pct higher than the initial public offering price of 3,000 yen.

On the basis of the closing price, Mercari's stock market capitalization exceeded 710 billion yen, making the market debut the biggest IPO in Japan this year.

The market capitalization was the largest on the TSE Mothers, replacing that of major smartphone game provider Mixi Inc..

Amid high investor attention, Mercari shares attracted a flood of buy orders and went untraded for about two hours from the start of trading.

After fetching the initial price of 5,000 yen, Mercari shot up to 6,000 yen in early afternoon trading with a maximum allowable single-day gain.

Established in 2013, Mercari expanded its business rapidly by attracting mainly young people to its service in which users can put items on sale by posting their pictures taken with smartphones and providing brief descriptions.

Its namesake app has been downloaded over 70 million times in Japan.

The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO mainly for advertising to acquire new customers in the United States. Jiji Press