KUALA LUMPUR (March 22): The public tranche of Eco World International Bhd's (EWI) initial public offering (IPO) has been oversubscribed by 8.87 times.

In a statement today, EWI said 23,568 applications for 473.66 million shares were received from the Malaysian public against the 48 million offer shares available for subscription, which were offered at RM1.20 apiece.

"Based on RM1.20 per share, EWI's IPO will be the largest in Malaysia since June 2015, with its RM2.58 billion offering attracting substantial interest from international and Malaysian investors alike, as evidenced by its institutional book being nine times covered," it added.

The institutional offering involves the issuance of 449.46 million IPO shares at RM1.20 apiece, of which 212.4 million shares are allocated to three cornerstone investors, namely Permodalan Nasional Bhd, Kumpulan Wang Persaraan (Diperbadankan) and the Employees Provident Fund Board. This represents 47.3% of the institutional offering and about 8.9% of the enlarged issued share capital of EWI.

The remaining 237.06 million IPO shares are allocated to Malaysian and foreign institutional and selected investors.

"We are overwhelmed by the strong support and interest we have received for the IPO from both institutional and retail investors. This gives us the best possible start as a newly listed entity — the faith and confidence which our investors have placed in us will definitely spur us on to grow our business and scale to greater heights post-listing," said EWI president and chief executive officer Datuk Teow Leong Seng in the statement.

Teow also noted that the group has secured total sales of RM6.49 billion from its existing projects in London and Sydney as of Jan 31, 2017.

"With strong strategic investors on board and wide-spread support from the investing community, we believe that EWI is positioned to establish ourselves as an international property developer of choice going forward," he added.