By Nathan Gill

     July 8 (Bloomberg) — Enjoy SA, a Chilean casino operator, raised 23.1 billion pesos ($42 million) in the Santiago stock exchange’s first initial public offering this year.

     Enjoy sold 462 million shares for 50 pesos each, the Santiago-based company said in a statement today. The stock fell 1 percent to 49.48 pesos in trading.

     Enjoy sold shares after shelving plans last year amid a plunge in the equity market that sent Chile’s Ipsa index down 22 percent, the most in a decade. The Ipsa has rallied 29 percent so far in 2009 after the central bank cut its benchmark lending rate to a record low and the government started spending savings from copper exports to bolster the economy.

     “The market was ready for this now,” Chief Executive Officer Francisco Javier Martinez said in a ceremony at the stock exchange. “Demand was much more than I expected.”

     The IPO is the country’s first since Azul Azul SA, owner of soccer club Universidad de Chile, went public in November, the country’s only IPO in 2008. Enjoy’s sale may spur more new listings as the market recovers, said Raul Barros, an analyst at FIT Corredores de Bolsa in Santiago.

     “Enjoy’s IPO represents a change in consumer perceptions,” Barros said. “This could be the point of departure for new offerings next year.”

‘Stabilization and Recovery’

    The IPO reflects the “stabilization and recovery” of equity markets, Jorge Selaive and Trinidad Bone, analysts with BCI Corredor de Bolsa SA, wrote in a June 25 note.

     “This could create incentives for other companies to list on the exchange as a source of new financing,” they wrote.

Enjoy lost 2.4 billion pesos in the first quarter of this year, compared with a 2.7 billion-peso profit a year earlier, according to a report from Larrain Vial Corredora de Bolsa SA, the Santiago-based broker managing the sale.

     Profit declined because of the opening of casinos and the increased costs of servicing the company’s debt, Barros said. He recommended buying shares at a price of up to 48 pesos.

     Enjoy forecasts 2009 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of 27.3 billion pesos, according to the Larrain Vial report.