CROCODILIAN skin tannery Heng Long International has bucked the recent trend of tanking initial public offerings (IPOs) by ending its debut session yesterday in positive territory.

After hitting a low of 27 cents during the first hour of trading, the stock saw a surge in buying interest which pushed it steadily to a high of 35.5 cents before closing the day at 35 cents, against its initial public offer price of 34 cents per share. Some 28.86 million units changed hands.

Heng Long's performance bucked the recent trend of IPOs mostly heading south immediately after listing. Of the eight new listings since early June, only two others - mainboard's Sino Construction and Catalist's Mencast Holdings - ended their first trading day above their IPO price. But all are underwater now, except for Heng Long.

The question is whether the latest debutante can sustain its strong first-day performance, given that it came on a day when the market staged a modest recovery.

Some brokers believe it could. And a key reason for this, they claim, is its seemingly recession-proof business.

As one of the five top-tier tanneries of crocodilian leather in the world, Heng Long produces over two-thirds of all the crocodilian leather used in Europe's top-tier, super-luxury fashion goods, which include handbags, shoes, jackets, accessories and watch-straps. Its customers include Hermes, Prada, Stefano Ricci, Testoni, Zagliani, Brioni, the Richemont Group, Rolex and Franck Muller.

However, three of the five global crocodilian leather tanneries are already controlled by top European fashion houses - two by Hermes International and a third by the Gucci Group. That leaves Heng Long as one of only two remaining independent players.

Given the fact that fashion houses prefer to control their supply chains for quality and consistency of supplies, many in the market believe that Heng Long is a potential acquisition target.

But the Koh family, which controls 75 per cent of the company via some 200 million shares, has a six-month moratorium on any sale. Still, with its market capitalisation at just over $90 million, Heng Long won't be an expensive acquisition for a high-end European fashion house.

Not surprisingly, all this has attracted an interesting line-up of anchor investors in Heng Long's IPO. Leading the pack are 'super-brokers' Han Seng Juan and David Loh Kim Kang, whose Centurion group snapped up 8.5 million or 12.5 per cent of the 68 million new placement shares. And Centurion was actively buying more shares on the open market yesterday.

Heng Long's IPO of 68 million new shares raised $22 million, the bulk of which will be used to secure more supply sources, expand facilities in Singapore and pay down debt.