The next stage of Grand Twins International’s (GTI) listing on the Cambodia Stock Exchange – public subscriptions – has had a positive response, according to the head of one of the country’s brokerage firms.

Svay Hay, CEO of Acleda Securities, a registered broker for GTI, said the subscription process had attracted interest from Taiwanese and Chinese investors over the past five days.

“We expect it to be over-subscribed, both with unsuccessful book-building applicants and new applicants,” he said.

GTI will be the second company to go public on the CSX since it commenced trading in 2012 with the Phnom Penh Water Supply Authority’s initial public offering.

Despite the long-awaited arrival, however, Hay said developing an active, day-trading culture in Cambodia would depend mainly on the companies’ transparency and communication with investors.

“At this stage we can only think they are long-term investors. Short term [and day trading] will really depend on how much and how often the company releases information,” he said.

Stephen Hsu, CEO of Phnom Penh Securities (PPS), GTI’s underwriter told the Post that apart from awaiting payment from foreign investors, the open-to-the-public share sell process was “so far, so good”, without revealing further details about the progress.

Public subscriptions for the GTI IPO are restricted to a minimum purchase of no less than 100 shares at $2.41 per share. The subscriptions process will end May 9, close to three weeks ahead of the May 29 official listing.

The public subscriptions offering comes after the initial book-building process, which targeted large-scale individual and institutional investors, was finalised on April 24 and helped set the final share price.

According to underwriter PPS’ official book building results, more than 2.7 million of the eight-million-share offering were successfully snapped up by big investors.

Cambodian investor interest in GTI’s IPO was dwarfed by off-shore interest with 92 foreigners now holding more than 2.1 million shares in the Taiwanese-owned garment manufacturer.

Just 13 local applicants successfully managed to acquire 233,000 shares in GTI.

Hsu refrained from identifying the largest share holders but did say they were primarily from Taiwan, China and Japan.

“Institutional investors, especially private equity funds, are very interested in the company’s return, which is quite a bit higher than investing in other companies or bank deposits,” he added, citing GTI’s price-to-earnings ratio (P/E) – the amount investors are willing pay per share given the company’s profits.