THE company behind the No Signboard Seafood chain of restaurants will raise about S$35 million from an initial public offering (IPO) and cornerstone placement of shares at S$0.28 apiece.

In an offer document released on Thursday, No Signboard said it will offer 65.7 million shares in its bid to list on the Singapore Exchange' s Catalist board. The offering comprises 15.7 million new shares and 50 million vendor shares sold by an investment vehicle controlled by chief executive Sam Lim and chief operating officer Lim Lay Hoon, both siblings.

Of the invitation shares, 2.5 million will be offered for public subscription, and the remaining 63.2 million will be placed out.

The offering price values No Signboard at S$129.5 million, and represents 13.9 times the company' s earnings per share for the year ended September 2016.Cornerstone investors, which include Asian Opportunities Absolute Return Master Fund, Goi Kok Ming, JPMorgan Asset Management (Singapore), Lam Choon Sen David, LB Asset Management, Lion Global Investors, OSC Investments Capital and Qilin Asset Management, have each entered into a separate but concurrent cornerstone subscription agreement for an additional 59.3 million new shares at the same price.

The IPO will close at noon on Nov 28, and trading will begin on Nov 30.

RHT Capital is the issue manager and sponsor, and OCBC Bank is the bookruner, underwriter and placement agent, of the listing.

Singapore seafood hawkers have been competing for decades in the city-state&rsquo s notoriously cutthroat culinary scene. Now they&rsquo re vying for the favor of stock market investors.

No Signboard Holdings Ltd., known for its signature white pepper crab dish, started taking orders this week for an initial public offering that could value the company at as much as S$130 million ($95 million).  It&rsquo s seeking to replicate the success of long-time rival Jumbo Group Ltd., the chili crab purveyor whose shares have more than doubled since its first-time share sale in October 2015. 

Investors are already lining up for No Signboard&rsquo s offering. Local businessmen  are committing some of their own money including Kenneth Goi, chief operating officer of property developer GSH Corp., and David Lam, founder of bulk container provider Goodpack, according to a prospectus. An asset management arm of JPMorgan Chase & Co. has also agreed to buy stock as a cornerstone investor, the prospectus shows.

&ldquo It&rsquo s a very unique type of restaurant,&rdquo said  Toshihiko Takamoto, a Singapore-based money manager at Asset Management One, who said he&rsquo s enjoyed meals at No Signboard outlets. &ldquo A lot of retail investors will probably like this deal, especially if the company starts handing out dividends. It&rsquo s a familiar name to them.&rdquo

No Signboard&rsquo s IPO is seeking to raise as much as S$35 million. Investors are being offered 125 million shares at S$0.23 to S$0.28 apiece, according to terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg.  Proceeds will go toward developing the company&rsquo s beer operations, which sell proprietary brews under the Draft Denmark brand, as well as establishing a new chain of casual dining restaurants and expanding its ready meal business.

The deal comes at a time when Singapore&rsquo s Straits Times Index is  trading at a two-year high as it rides the global stock market rally. Companies on the benchmark gauge are trading at an average 15.7 times this year&rsquo s estimated earnings, a premium of about 12 percent over its five-year average, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The restaurant chain traces its origins back to the late 1970s, when it started as a hawker stall without a signboard. The grandmother of the company&rsquo s current executive directors began the business at the Mattar Road Hawker Centre at a time when crab was a less popular dish, the prospectus shows. No Signboard reported pro-forma net income of S$7 million last year, down from S$9 million in 2015. Revenue on that basis rose 22 percent to S$30.9 million.

No Signboard is taking investor orders through Nov. 17. It aims to price the offering on Nov. 23 and begin trading on Singapore&rsquo s  junior Catalist market on Nov. 30, the terms show. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp.  is sole bookrunner of the offering, while RHT Capital Pte is acting as issue manager and sponsor.