HONG KONG: Shares of Country Garden, a South China property developer, surged more than 35 percent over its offering price on Friday, reflecting strong investor confidence in the mainland's real estate market despite recent government cool-down measures.

Country Garden shares closed at HK$7.27 on Friday, a HK$1.89 increase over the initial offering price. Turnover was HK$7.23 billion.

The debut came one day after a slump on the Shanghai Composite Index, caused by bearish market sentiment, but regained momentum in the late trading session, analysts said.

"The opening bid was lower than expected due to the bleak atmosphere caused by the imminent launch of austerity measures. But the closing price is within our range of expectation," said Ricky Cheung, executive vice-president of Enlighten Securities and Futures Ltd.

Country Garden, which sells most of its houses to Hong Kong buyers, entered the market spotlight after its initial public offering raised more than HK$330 billion. It was the second-largest IPO in the history of the Hong Kong exchange, after the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China's HK$410 billion launch last year.

The trading frenzy was sparked by remarks by property tycoon Lee Shau-kee, chairman of Henderson Land Development, Hong Kong's third-largest developer, who chose Country Garden as one of the five hottest picks among mainland property stocks.

Lee was brought in as a cornerstone investor, alongside Malaysian tycoon Robert Kuok, CITIC Pacific's Larry Yung Chi-kin, Singapore's Temasek Holdings and Chow Tai Fook Enterprises. Together, they agreed to buy HK$3.5 billion worth of shares.

Yeung Kwok-keung, Country Garden's chairman, said the company would quicken expansion outside Guangdong Province.

"We will apply our business model into other mainland cities and strive to diversify our products," he said at the listing ceremony on Friday.

"We will continue to pursue low land cost strategy, and we've identified five cities in Hunan, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning as our next targets."

Country Garden has reported 300 percent compound annual net profit growth rate over the last three years.

(China Daily 04/21/2007 page10)