Interpac Business and Migration Solutions Melbourne Australia

(November 23, 2010)

QR NATIONAL managed to deliver a small premium to retail investors as 30 per cent of its stock changed hands on debut.

Shares in the rail group began trading at $2.54, a cent below its $2.55 price for institutions but safely above the $2.45 paid by retail investors.

QRN quickly touched a high of $2.68 on large volume, finishing the day at $2.65 for an 8 per cent return for retail investors.

"This is a great opportunity and one that comes around very rarely," QRN chairman John Prescott said after the listing.

"We are well positioned to capitalise on the booming resources sector, strongly leveraged to India and China and a recovering Australian economy."

About 30 per cent of QRN's stock changed hands during the first day of trading, something CEO Lance Hockridge described as "reasonably typical" in floats of this kind.

He said that from today he was committed to "returning to the field to deliver all the promises in the offer document".

Mr Prescott and Mr Hockridge declared they were more than happy with the stock exchange debut but said the next challenge was building the business in line with the prospectus forecasts.

"We are very pleased with the spread of shareholders and the way the float has gone," Mr Hockridge said.

Chris Weston, an institutional dealer at IG Markets, said superannuation and equity funds and other large investors might be buying shares in anticipation of the rail company joining equity indices.

"There is certainly a large element of today's volume being driven by fund managers buying to top up their allocation," Mr Weston said.

"There is also an element of more cautious investors who simply wanted to see how the float went before buying."

QR National will rank among Australia's 50 largest companies, with headquarters in Brisbane.

The Queensland Government will retain a 40 per cent stake in QRN which it has said it would offload by the end of 2012.

However, the largest individual shareholder in the company after the Queensland Government is a British hedge fund called the Children's Investment Fund Foundation headed by aggressive investment chief executive Chris Hohn.

Mr Hockridge said he had met Mr Hohn on one of his many roadshows and was completely comfortable with his fund owning just over 6 per cent of QRN.

"We met with a whole host of people during our roadshows and yes, we did meet with Mr Hohn," Mr Hockridge said.

"And we understand and respect their investments in the rail industry around the world and we are looking forward to meeting with them as well as many other shareholders in the future."

(Source:news.com.au)