(AS) starts trading on NYSE

Amer Sports, the Finnish athletic company behind the Wilson tennis racket and Arc’teryx, debuted on the public markets Thursday with a 5% pop after pricing its initial public offering at a discount.

The stock opened at $13.40 a share on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “AS.” Amer had priced its IPO at $13 per share and raised $1.37 billion in the offering. It had originally expected to offer 100 million shares at $16 to $18 each. 

The offering values Amer at about $6.3 billion, down from a previous valuation of up to $8.7 billion. 

When Amer debuted, only 2.5 million shares traded, which indicates little sell-side interest and is low for an offering of 105 million shares. Typically, bookrunners would try to open with around 10% of shares, which would be about 10 million shares.

Amer’s decision to discount its IPO came after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated the central bank isn’t ready to start cutting rates, casting a pall over market sentiment and the floundering IPO market.

Wall Street has been eager to see a resurgence in the IPO market after it grounded nearly to a halt over the past two years, but recent debuts, including from German shoemaker Birkenstock, have been muted and failed to impress. 

Amer runs some of the most recognizable brands in the athletic space, but its balance sheet is saddled with $2.1 billion in debt, and it didn’t post any profits between 2020 and September 2023, according to a securities filing.

In the nine months ending Sept. 30, 2023, the company saw $3.05 billion in revenue, up from $2.35 billion in the same period a year ago. It posted a net loss of $113.9 million during the period, higher than the $104.4 million…