Kamala Rai, a pathology technician at Sukraraj Tropical and Infectious Disease Hospital, is not a regular investor in the stock market. But she rushed to buy shares of National Micro-Finance Bittiya Sanstha when it conducted an initial public offering (IPO) that ended on Wednesday.

“As share prices of micro-finance institutions (MFIs) have been in the highs in recent days, I was attracted by the possible benefit of investing in National’s shares,” said Rai. She was also swayed by the insistence of her friends who are actively involved in share trading in the secondary market, she said.

Share prices of many MFIs are featured in the top 10 list. For example, the price per share of NMB Microfinance Bittiya Sanstha reached Rs4,456 on Wednesday, much higher than the price of shares of Standard Chartered

Bank which were traded at

Rs3,650 apiece.

Ishwor Karki, a law student from Kandaghari, Kathmandu, has been trading stocks for the last two years. He was also standing in line at National’s IPO to subscribe to its shares hopeful of making a profit from the investment.

“We have to fear little while investing in the primary market compared to the secondary market,” said Karki, who benefited greatly from his investment in stocks as the market has been engaged in a bull run for the last two years. “I have missed few opportunities to invest in primary shares for the last two years even if it is a very small amount.” The enthusiasm of investors at National’s IPO was vividly shown by the vastly oversubscribed offering. According to the share issue and sales manager NIBL Capital Market, the IPO had been oversubscribed 166 times as of Tuesday.

A senior NIBL Capital official said that the subscription amount had reached more than Rs5 billion on Tuesday against the IPO worth Rs30 million. “The subscription figure will reach even higher if the applications submitted on Wednesday, which we are in the process of calculating, are also included,” said the official.

The official said that he had heard that some potential investors could not subscribe to the IPO because they didn’t have a Dmat account. “There has been a good subscription rate from outside the Kathmandu Valley,” he said.

According to the prospectus

published by National, it suffered a net loss of Rs748,000 in fiscal

2013-14 but rebounded in the

following year, posting a profit of Rs10.39 million. National is estimated to have earned a net profit of Rs23.23 million in the last fiscal year 2015-16.