(Bloomberg) -- A week before Porsche AG’s first day of trading in Frankfurt, price indications already point to a strong debut for the sports-car maker seeking to defy jittery markets with the biggest European initial public offering in a decade. 

The company was trading at as much as 17% above the top end of the 76.5 to 82.5-euro price range marketed at institutional and retail investors, according to unregulated gray market pricing.

In the unregulated market, investors bet on the price at which the shares of a company will debut to profit from any sizable jump. Early price indications, while encouraging, are no guarantee of a rally during Porsche’s trading debut next week, as central banks’ hawkish stance is putting pressure on equity markets.

READ: Porsche IPO Marries Luxury and Tech for Long-Term Family Gain

“The listing offers a good opportunity to secure shares in Porsche AG at a moderate valuation level, given the IPO range,” said Guillermo Hernandez Sampere, head of trading at asset manager MPPM GmbH in Germany. 

The yet-to-be listed stock pared gains to trade at 93 euros by 10:38 a.m. in Frankfurt on light volumes of about 200,000 euros on German broker Lang & Schwarz’s platform. 

The offering is set to value the maker of the 911 sports car at as much as 75 billion euros, below an earlier top-end goal of as much as 85 billion euros at a time of major market upheaval. 

Still, the offering has drawn strong interest. Volkswagen AG garnered more than enough investor orders to cover the 9.4 billion-euro ($9.4 billion) initial public offering of its iconic car unit, just hours after it started taking requests for the share sale on Tuesday. Porsche’s public trading debut is set for Sept. 29. 

Nearly 40% of the offering has already been placed with large funds. Four cornerstone investors -- Qatar Investment Authority, Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, T. Rowe Price and ADQ -- have together committed to take up as much as 3.7 billion euros of the IPO.

The share sale is also open to investors in Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. A successful Porsche listing is seen as being crucial to a dormant European IPO market marked by next-to-no activity.

While issuers have shied away from the IPO market due to particularly high volatility, Porsche’s strong brand name coupled with its status as a rare, sizable European listing is helping draw investor interest, bankers say. 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.