Watford Holdings Ltd, the parent company of Bermudian reinsurer Watford Re, has announced that its common shares have begun trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market.
The company’s shares debuted on the Nasdaq under the symbol ‘WTRE’ at $25.26, a roughly 36% discount to book value, but had added 7% to close at $27 by the end of yesterday.
Watford Re is the third-party capital backed total-return reinsurance venture that is part-owned by re/insurer Arch Capital, and asset manager Highbridge Principal Strategies.
Its parent, Watford Holdings, announced in the summer of last year that it was still evaluating its options for a listing, before confirming in January that it had formally filed for an initial public offering (IPO).
“This is an important milestone in the evolution of Watford,” said John Rathgeber, Watford’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO).
“Listing the Company on the Nasdaq achieves the objective of providing a liquidity mechanism for our existing shareholders; it will allow us to diversify our investor base; and it will give us access to the public capital markets when we need to finance our growth,” he explained.
Watford is a global property and casualty re/insurance company with approximately $1.1 billion in capital and operations in Bermuda, the U.S and Europe.
The company made a net loss of almost $55 million for 2018 and it had a book value of $39.22 at the end of the year.
