French home furnishings chain Maisons du Monde began its first day of trading on the Euronext Paris Friday, after setting the price of its global offering at 17 euros ($19) per share.
Before the morning had finished, Maisons du Monde had already charged higher with gains of above 4 percent, before paring later in trade. However, the firm is already looking ahead on how to develop and enhance its international footprint.
"The plan we have for the next five years is ambitious, because our project is to double the size of the company within the next five years," Gilles Petit, Maisons du Monde's CEO, told CNBC on Friday.
While the plan to expand the company's size is "ambitious", Petit said it was "very realistic" at the same time, as the company didn't want to sell a story to the market that couldn't be achieved.
"We are committed to deliver that (goal). So this will be done through the happenings in the countries where we already operate, (however) we do not expect to open (up in) a new country."
As of last December, the retailer has some 262 stores across seven countries in Europe, including over 190 in France. Aside from its home country, physical Maisons du Monde stores are based in Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg.
While the retailer doesn't have any stores in the U.K., it has made its products available to the region on its e-commerce platform, along with consumers in Austria, Portugal, and the Netherlands. In 2015, 17 percent of the company's revenue came from its online business.
IPO was a 'big success'
Reacting to Friday's market response, the CEO said he was "very positive" on the IPO's "big success", especially considering the volatility the markets have been dealing with during 2016.
"We are very happy with the quality of the investors we've got and we're already very happy with the evolution of the share price," said Petit.
"We started at 17 (euros) and we're already at 18, so very good news in (what's seen as) a quite volatile market; to show that a good story of profitable growth can be very attractive for the market."
The total size of the IPO offer came in at 330 million euros (before exercise of an over-allotment option), according to a company statement issued on Thursday. 160 million euros of this total was raised by issuing new shares, enabling the business to reduce its debt and improve its financial flexibility.
With the company's offering priced in at 17 euros per share, this brought the market capitalization of the brand up to 769 million euros, on the day of its listing.
