An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers

@guardian.co.tt

The Ini­tial Pub­lic Of­fer­ing (IPO) of SO­LIS (Er­ic SO­LIS Mar­ket­ing Ltd), which opened on Ju­ly 16 and closed on Au­gust 9, was over­sub­scribed. 

This was an­nounced by the com­pa­ny in a T&T Guardian news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment on Sun­day.

In the ad­ver­tise­ment, SO­LIS said 2,750,000 shares were is­sued, re­sult­ing in over 150 first-time in­vestors on the Trinidad and To­ba­go Stock Ex­change (TTSE). 

The com­pa­ny’s ex­ec­u­tive chair­man An­gel­la Per­sad told the Guardian yes­ter­day that “SO­LIS is re­al­ly proud to have achieved these re­sults, to have our IPO over­sub­scribed on the Small and Medi­um En­ter­prise  (SME Ex­change). 

Per­sad said as far as the com­pa­ny is aware it is the first to have achieved this mile­stone, and it means that the in­vestor com­mu­ni­ty is look­ing for sol­id in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. She said in­vestors seem will­ing to put their mon­ey where there is a sound busi­ness mod­el with a good track record of per­for­mance and an  ex­pe­ri­enced man­age­ment team be­hind it.  

“We are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­cit­ed that we have been able to bring over 150 new in­di­vid­ual in­vestors to the mar­ket. This is a new group of peo­ple who will now be­come aware of stock mar­ket trends and per­for­mance and be avail­able to in­vest in oth­er list­ings in the fu­ture,” she said. 

Per­sad in­di­cat­ed that more than 100 of the em­ploy­ees from the Of­fice Au­thor­i­ty group (which in­cludes SO­LIS) in­vest­ed in the IPO, and these are em­ploy­ees at all lev­els of the group.  

“We were par­tic­u­lar­ly hum­bled by this show of faith and con­fi­dence in our group and its lead­er­ship, as it is tes­ti­mo­ny to their own com­mit­ment to its suc­cess go­ing for­ward.” 

Asked whether the com­pa­ny had plans to do an­oth­er of­fer­ing, Per­sad said there were no plans to do an­oth­er, but it is cer­tain­ly not off the ta­ble for lat­er on down the road. 

The lead bro­ker was NCB Mer­chant Bank T&T, and the co-bro­kers were Bourse Bro­kers, Caribbean Stock­bro­kers, First Cit­i­zens Bro­ker­age and Ad­vi­so­ry Ser­vices, JMMB Se­cu­ri­ties T&T, Re­pub­lic Wealth Man­age­ment, Shep­pard Stock­bro­kers and West In­dies Stock­bro­kers.  

The SO­LIS prospec­tus, which was avail­able on the com­pa­ny’s web­site yes­ter­day, in­di­cates that of the 2,750,000 shares of­fered: 

• In­di­vid­ual in­vestors are ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a max­i­mum of 1,125,000 mil­lion shares, equal to 40.9 per cent of the IPO; 

• NCB Mer­chant Bank, which is un­der­writ­ing the IPO, has been al­lo­cat­ed a max­i­mum share of 825,000, which equates to 30 per cent; 

In the SO­LIS prospec­tus, the com­pa­ny’s au­dit­ed rev­enue for the fi­nan­cial year 2023, stood at $28,123,040, in 2022 $20,463,922, and in 2021, $26,356,165.  

The com­pre­hen­sive in­come for the fi­nan­cial year 2023 was record­ed at $1,830,763, in 2022, $193,568, and in 2021 $340,664.