Interloop limited, which makes socks for Nike and Adidas, is planning Pakistan’s biggest ever initial public offering by a private firm, according to Bloomberg.
Bloomberg reported that the company is planning to raise as much as 6.8 billion rupees ($51 million) to expand its sock manufacturing capacity by around 20 per cent and enter the denim business.
Chairman and Co-Founder Musadaq Zulqarnain said the company will offer 12.5 per cent of the business in the sale, likely to take place in January, and is aiming to lift revenue by 77 per cent over five years.
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The Interloop offer will go beyond the previous record for a private company when Pakistan Stock Exchange Ltd. raised 4.5 billion rupees two years ago.
“Our capacity is already full,” Zulqarnain said in an interview to Bloomberg at the company’s head office in Faisalabad. Interloop can see more growth, so will “take that risk” to expand, he said.
The listing comes as Prime Minister Imran Khan tries to spark an export revival to make up ground that Pakistan has lost to low-cost manufacturing destinations like Vietnam and Bangladesh.
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Interloop was founded in the early 1990s by Zulqarnain and his brother, Chief Executive Officer Navid Fazil. The company now employs around 16,000 people and makes more than half a billion pairs of socks a year. Revenue for the 12 months through June was 31 billion rupees, according to Zulqarnain.
During this 2018, Pakistan Stock Exchange has seen three IPO’s which include Matco Foods, At-Tuhur Limited and AGP Pharmaceutical’s listing on the PSX in January and February respectively.
