Territorial Bancorp Inc. of Honolulu is off to a flying start.
Shares of the $1.2 billion-asset thrift company shot up 50% after they began trading Monday, delivering the first-day pop that made such investments legend, but that had become rare in recent years.
The former mutual conducted a standard conversion, selling all its stock at once.
Because the offering was oversubscribed by depositors, Territorial increased the size to what is called the supermaximum. It sold 12.2 million shares at $10 each.
The pricing works out to about 60% of Territorial's tangible book value, according to a prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May.
The stock debuted Monday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol TBNK and promptly rose in heavy trading. About 4.6 million shares changed hands, and the stock closed at $14.99.
The company said in a press release last week that it had received subscriptions to buy $284 million worth of shares, more than double the amount it could sell.
Analysts said Territorial's pristine asset quality and its relatively large asset size compared with other mutuals that have gone public recently helped make the offering attractive.
The highly anticipated conversion defied what has been a tough market for similar stocks. Over the past year some mutuals have had to call off their plans to go public, because they failed to sell the minimum number of shares that regulators required even after extending their offerings to the general public.
