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Company president and CEO John Lai rang the opening NYSE bell at 6:30 a.m. ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ time. Mister Car Wash stock (MCW) opened at an initial public offering price of $15 per share, then shot up to nearly $22 before closing the day at $20.30, up $5.30 or 35%.

Lai said the company was thrilled with the IPO results and described ringing the NYSE bell flanked by a dozen company colleagues as a “beyond cool, surreal� experience.

“It was a dream come true on many levels and something I’ll never forget,� said Lai, who started with Mister Car Wash in 2002. He credited the company’s employees for its success and recalled how he became teary-eyed at seeing the company’s logo banner behind the NYSE dais.

“We had 13 people up there but I wish we had 6,000,� Lai said, referring to the company’s approximate employee count in the 21 states it serves. “The people on the dais were the least important, starting with me.�

Mister Car Wash, now trading under the ticker symbol MCW, was looking to raise up to $635.7 million in an offering of 37.5 million shares, including about 6 million shares being sold by company shareholders, at a price of $15 to $17 per share.

At the offering price of $15, the company raised $468.8 million in an IPO led by underwriters — investment houses that buy initial shares in bulk for resale — BofA Securities, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Jefferies.

The IPO price translates to an initial company valuation of $5.6 billion, which Lai said likely places Mister Car Wash in the top 20 of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥-based public companies based on market capitalization.

Mister Car Wash is the only ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥-based company on the New York Stock Exchange.

“We’re extremely proud to represent ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ and the great state of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥, as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange,â€� Lai said. “For us, it’s beyond a rite of passage, it’s a validation of all the years of hard work and really underscores our growth potential.â€�

“Helping ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ create a stronger and more diverse economic base is good for our entire city, so we’re happy that in one small way we’re contributing to that dynamic,â€� said Lai, a University of ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ alumnus who sits on the Southern ÃÛèÖÖ±²¥ Leadership Council.

Looking ahead, Lai said, Mister Car Wash plans to continue an aggressive program of acquiring smaller car-wash chains.

He noted that even though his company is the industry’s biggest with more than 340 company-built and acquired locations, it still only has 5% of the highly fragmented market so there’s plenty of room for growth.

The company remains focused on the conveyor car washes, where customers stay in their cars and a conveyor belt moves the car through the wash at a set speed.

Known for its “Hotshine� process, hot wax applied in a sheet over cars at the end of a wash, Mister Car Wash’s latest prototype company-built wash, like one opened on South Kino Parkway in 2019, can smoothly wash up to 185 cars per hour, Lai said.

Members of the company’s monthly-fee “unlimited wash club� are able to swipe electronic cards to enter and exit in a sparkling clean car in about 3 minutes, he noted.