SHANGHAI -- The shares of Chinese technology company QuantumCTek have set a record by soaring more than 1,000% on their first day of trading on the STAR Market in Shanghai, underscoring how China's investors are plunging into stocks amid expectations of strong growth.
QuantumCTek shares on Thursday opened at 280 yuan a share, compared with the initial offering price of 36.18 yuan. The stock traded over 1,000% higher at one point before closing at 370.45 yuan, or 924% higher, giving the Hefei-based company a market capitalization of 29.6 billion yuan ($4.2 billion).
The company bills itself as the first quantum information technology manufacturer to list on the science and technology board, the kind of cutting-edge "new infrastructure" that the government in Beijing wants to promote at a time when the U.S. is targeting Chinese companies by stepping up curbs on technology exports.
On its website, QuantumCTek claims to be a pioneer and one of the largest quantum information technology providers in the world. Besides hardware equipment, it provides quantum secure solutions for use in telecommunications infrastructure and cloud computing to customers in the government, financial and energy sectors.
The listing comes amid a recent surge in the country's stock markets in Shanghai and in Shenzhen, partly due to margin lending.
With margin lending, investors use their own money to buy only a slice of an investment -- typically between 20% and 50% -- and borrow the rest from banks and securities firms. The practice was in part blamed for the 2015 market crash.
The country's security watchdog published on Wednesday a list of 258 financial outfits that provide illegal lending to alert investors looking for margin lending.
The STAR Market has been billed as China's version of the tech-heavy Nasdaq market in the U.S., with the aim of channeling capital into the country's tech sector. Set up 12 months ago, it is more loosely regulated than other Chinese exchanges.
