Porsche AG shares price at top end of announced range

Porsche AG shares will list on the stock market on Thursday after Volkswagen priced shares at the top end of the announced range, a sign that the luxury brand has attracted buyers despite market turmoil.

The final price of books was 82.50 euros, according to the carmaker, at the top end of the 76.50 -- 82.50 euro range it announced earlier this month.

Around 9: 15 a.m. local time on 0715 GMT The bumper flotation, expected to generate around 19.5 billion euro $19.0 billion, comes at a time when instability in European markets has resulted in almost no other share sales and stocks of luxury carmakers have been slumping.

Since the global financial crisis in 2009, companies on the continent have raised the lowest amount since, at $44 billion, of which only $4.5 billion comes from IPOs, according to Refinitiv data.

Volkswagen said that the market's volatility was exactly why fund managers with money to invest were sorely in need of a stable and attractive stock like Porsche AG.

Chris-Oliver Schickentanz, chief investment officer at Capitell, said Porsche was and is the pearl in the Volkswagen GroupVolkswagen Group. The IPO has made it very transparent what value the market brings to Porsche. That has a positive effect on Volkswagen shareholders. Volkswagen executives had long mulled the listing of Porsche, a move that executives hoped would raise much needed funds and lift Volkswagen's own value, despite tens of billions of costs for a radical shift towards electric mobility and software.

The Porsche and Piech families will have a blocking minority in the namesake brand because they will have 25% plus one ordinary share control over the carmaker - in Porsche AG.

Up to 113,875, 000 preferred shares, with no voting rights, will be sold to investors over the course of the initial public offering.