Firms deferring IPOs until market conditions improve

MANILA, Philippines — Volatile market conditions spurred by huge and frequent interest rate hikes, scorching inflation, and weakening peso could set back the timetable of companies planning to debut at the stock market.

Industry sources said several companies that had earlier announced plans to hold an initial public offering (IPO) of their stocks this year are now considering to pursue the fund-raising by next year, at the earliest when market conditions improve.

North Star Meat Merchants Inc., a pork and meat vendor, which was supposed to list last June, decided to defer its planned IPO due to the prevailing market volatility.

However, it is still determined to go public in the near future, possibly next year or 2024, its president and CEO Anthony Ng said last week.

The original plan was to offer up to 392 million primary shares consisting of 360 million primary common shares and 32 million secondary common shares, with up to 58 million over-allotment option shares, to be offered at up to P10 per share.

Another IPO-bound company, Upson International Corp., already announced that it is rescheduling its public offer to the first quarter of 2023 instead of September this year as originally planned.

It said this would give investors more time to better estimate the company’s full-year performance.

Upson is an IT-related merchandise company offering retail products through its stores that include Octagon Computer Superstore, Micro Valley and Gadget King.

The company was planning to raise P4.1 billion in net proceeds from an offering of up to 888.2 million common shares at P5.50 per share.

The Villar Group, meanwhile, has also announced plans for a P3.2-billion IPO of Premiere Island Power REIT Corp. with a target listing in November.

According to its filing, PremiereREIT will offer up to 1.4 billion secondary common shares at a maximum offer price of P2 per share with an over-allotment option of up to 210 million secondary common shares.

But as of this writing, the company has not made any announcement yet on whether it would proceed with the IPO timetable or defer it to a later period.