LDK Solar up 11% on IPO and climbing

China's LDK Solar (NYSE: LDK) has posted a strong showing on its IPO so far this morning.

The stock is trading at $30, up 11.1 percent, after pricing 17,384,000 American Depository Shares (ADS) at $27, the top end of its expected $25-$27 range.

LDK Solar makes polycrystalline solar wafers, the principal raw material used to produce most solar cells, and sells them globally to manufacturers of photovoltaic products, including solar cells and solar modules.

The company only started production in April of 2006, reaching 100MW production capacity in July—a relatively small volume. Its headquarters and manufacturing facilities are in Xinyu City, Jiangxi province in China, and it maintains an office in Sunnyvale, California.

LDK planned to raise more than $400 million from the IPO, aiming to become the largest U.S. IPO of a Chinese Mainland company since 2005, and the largest ADS IPO in two years. It raised $469 million today in its pricing at $27 a share.

Morgan Stanley & Co. International and UBS AG served as joint book-running managers for the offering. Piper Jaffray & Co., CIBC World Markets Corp., and CLSA Limited served as co-managers. JPMorgan Chase Bank is the depositary for the ADSs.

LDK was the only company scheduled to price an IPO on U.S. exchanges this week.

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