Apax will receive £926.2m from selling 59pc of the company’s shares in the listing. Auto Trader, meanwhile, will receive £437m, after IPO costs of £23.3m, which will go towards repaying its debt facilities.

Since then Auto Trader has instead worked hard to shift interest online and has grown its online revenues at 7pc a year and has 35m visits to its websites, which it says is 4.2 times higher its nearest competitor.

The positive sentiment around the listing comes despite a bearish analyst report from research firm Eagle Alpha that raised questions about the strength of Auto Trader’s online growth. The analytics firm, set up by a former Morgan Stanley banker, said that while the website generated more than 171m visits in the past year, desktop visits in December had fallen to 10.4m.

However, people close to the company said this was typical of consumers reining in spending on cars and houses during the Christmas period. The company also now generates around 60pc of its visits through mobile devices, with roughly 3.5m users.

The company’s private equity owners at Apax pursued a stock market listing despite being approached by rival buyout firm Hellman Friedman with a £2bn takeover offer.