NZ-based Consumer lending company Harmoney has lacklustre stock exchange debut

Consumer lending company Harmoney has had a lacklustre debut on the Australian and New Zealand stock exchanges.

The company's shares were trading at $AU3.26, 7 percent below the $AU3.50 issue price in Australia, and at $NZ3.70 in New Zealand, about 1 percent lower.

The New Zealand based company, which specialises in personal loans, has made the Australian exchange its primary trading home with the NZX as a secondary market.

It's the second new listing for the NZX this year and comes after the company raised $AU92.5 million ($NZ99m) a few weeks ago.

Harmoney's chief executive David Stevens said the money would enable it to go to head-to-head against similarly styled companies that had listed on the ASX recently.

"This... is for us to be able to accelerate our marketing which has a very high correlation with our volume growth.

"After we did our series C capital raise last year in Australia we put a lot of money into our marketing there and we were able to get close to 10,000 accounts per month."

Stevens said it chose the ASX as its trading home because the Australian consumer lending market was 10 times larger than New Zealand.

"Whilst there are more competitors there's more opportunity."

In an operational update, the company said it had bettered the profit forecast in its prospectus for the four months ended October.

Its net profit for the period was NZ$1.6m, beating its guidance by NZ$500,000.

Meanwhile the head of the NZX, Mark Peterson, said a second listing on the local exchange this year was welcome, and he was not put out that Harmoney had made New Zealand its secondary market, saying it was important that local investors were able to trade the stock on the local market.

He was optimistic there would be more listings before the end of the year, as companies had a strong demand for capital.

"We are really hopeful that those will come off and we are actually pretty optimistic about next year as well."