Needham Bank's Ashland branch in 2019. Courtesy photo/ File

Needham Bank raised half a million dollars more in funds than it had intended to raise during its Dec. 28 initial public offering due to healthy demand.

The bank said it raised a total of $409.975 million, which was more than the $345 million it intended to raise initially when it filed for the IPO in June last year.

“The bank raised $409,975,000 from the IPO for a net of $401,929,497. These numbers are preliminary and unaudited. The proceeds will be used to fund our growth strategy,” Karen Marryat, Needham Bank chief marketing officer, said.

Marryat said the growth strategy where the funds will be used include: growing the bank’s commercial real estate and multifamily loan portfolio, diversifying its commercial and industrial loan portfolio, placing an emphasis on residential mortgage lending – including construction loans for single-family homes – growing consumer loan operations and diversifying the bank’s deposit gathering methods.

The bank earlier said that even before the Dec. 28 listing date, the IPO was oversubscribed by its account holders during the subscription offering that ended on Nov. 14. Needham’s account-holders had priority access to the offering if they held qualifying deposits at the bank as of March 2022.

Needham Bank is the only local bank that conducted an IPO in 2023 – a challenging year for banks due to high interest rates and an uncertain economic landscape. Everett Bank held its own IPO in 2022, but had to extend its subscription offering after preliminary results showed that the bank had not sold enough shares to complete the IPO.

Needham Bank is a prominent part of Boston’s commercial real estate lending sector and acquired a significant cannabis banking and lending business from Eastern Bank in early 2022.

The bank’s holding company is now publicly listed under the symbol NBBK and is currently priced around $13 per share in the stock market, higher than the original $10 price it set in the IPO.