FILE PHOTO: The Nasdaq logo is displayed at the Nasdaq Market site in Times Square in New York City, U.S., December 3, 2021. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon/File Photo

By Echo Wang and Atharva Singh

(Reuters) - Shares of Legence, the Blackstone-backed engineering and maintenance services provider, rose as much as about 12% above their IPO price on Friday in volatile trading, following a busy week for new listings.

The stock opened below its $28 offer price before rebounding to close at $30.50 in afternoon trading in New York, giving the company a market value of about $3.2 billion based on shares outstanding listed in earlier filings.

The San Jose, California-based company raised $728 million a day earlier by selling 26 million shares at $28 each, within its marketed range of $25 to $29.

The post-Labor Day IPO wave is shaping up to be one of the busiest in years, with analysts saying momentum could rival the surge seen in 2021. While several debuting companies have posted strong first-day gains, standout listings have largely come from venture capital-backed firms rather than private equity-owned businesses.

"Legence comes with significant debt and recent history shows investors have pushed back on similar private equity-backed deals after lackluster debuts from SailPoint, NIQ and McGraw Hill," said Jeff Zell, senior research analyst at IPO Boutique.

Blackstone, which bought Legence from private-equity firm Gemspring Capital in 2020, is taking the company public as part of a broader push to bring more of its portfolio firms to market. Funds managed by Blackstone were expected to hold about 74% of the voting power after the IPO.

The world's largest alternative asset manager has said it plans to pursue the busiest slate of IPOs since 2021.

Legence, which designs and installs systems such as heating, ventilation, air conditioning and energy-efficiency solutions, is focusing on fast-growing sectors with technically demanding buildings, including life sciences and data centers.

“Data centers ... have been a growing segment of our business for the last several years, especially as the technology that is used to cool servers in hyperscaler AI data centers has switched from air-cooled systems to direct liquid to chip systems, which really is right in our wheelhouse,” Legence CEO Jeffrey Sprau told Reuters in an interview.

Legence reported a net loss of $26.5 million on revenue of $1.1 billion for the first half of 2025, compared with a loss of $8.8 million on revenue of $989.6 million a year earlier, according to its filings.

(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York, Atharva Singh and Arasu Kannagi Basil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli, Shilpi Majumdar and Marguerita Choy)