Investors are clamouring to get a bite of seafood restaurant chain No Signboard Holdings, going by the rush for stock in the initial public offering that closed on Tuesday. The IPO was 23.6 times subscribed, the firm said yesterday.

The family-owned business known for its white pepper crab will start trading on the Catalist board of the Singapore Exchange at 9am today after pricing its shares at 28 cents apiece, the top end of its indicative range. Excluding stock that was offered to cornerstone investors, the IPO size was 65.7 million shares. The public was offered 2.5 million shares and the rest were placement shares.

The public offer was 268.6 times subscribed, with 7,620 valid applications made with about $188 million in funds received. The public and placement tranches combined were 23.6 times subscribed, after counting overwhelming indications of interest received for the placement shares. They were 11.2 times subscribed, based on the number of placement shares that were validly subscribed.

Rival seafood chain Jumbo Group, when it listed on the Catalist board two years ago, was eight times subscribed. It did not diclose indicated interest for its placement tranche.

No Signboard owns three restaurants - at the Esplanade, in VivoCity and at The Central @ Clarke Quay - plus a franchisee in Mattar Road run by relatives. It said restaurant sales generally have been declining over the past two years due to slower economic growth and fewer customers, though it pulled in more tourists, who spend more than locals.

The IPO will raise net proceeds of $18.7 million, with $10 million to be used to build a brewery in Indonesia and grow in-house beer brand Draft Denmark. No Signboard also intends to use $5 million to launch a new Chinese casual dining chain by opening two restaurants in the second half of next year.

At 28 cents a share, No Signboard is valued at 13.9 times its earnings per share for the year ended September 2016.