Philstar ran a 2022 preview piece about the Philippine Stock Exchange's [PSE 215.00 1.90%] ten 2022 IPOs, starting with the Haus Talk [HTI 1.50 pre-IPO] IPO on January 17th.
Figaro Coffee Group [FCG 0.75 pre-IPO] goes next on January 24th, then Citicore REIT [CREIT 3.15 pre-IPO] follows on February 17th.
None of the other IPOs listed in the article are even at the tentative date stage yet, so we’ll have to wait for SEC approval to get a better idea of the specific schedule for the seven other IPOs that will come later.
In that group of later IPOs are two REITs, one from SM Prime Holdings [SMPH 34.35 2.54%] and one from Vista Land & Lifescapes [VLL 3.49 2.05%], another Villar joint, PAVI Green (a power producer), the Fruitas [FRUIT 1.24 1.64%] subsidiary, Balai ni Fruitas, San Miguel Corp’s [SMC 112.90] Bank of Commerce, Ada Manufacturing Corp., and North Star Meat Merchants.
The article did not mention Ovialand, the mass-market housing developer that is aiming for a 2022 IPO, nor did it mention the Jollibee [JFC 218.40 1.58%] and DoubleDragon [DD 7.05] industrial REIT, CentralHub, which was also loosely slated for 2022.
MB BOTTOM-LINE
The PSE has several reasons to push IPOs, not the least of which is the large listing fee that the exchange is able to charge. The PSE is still a profit-seeking company, after all, and it’s usually wise to consider a company’s financial incentives when trying to predict what a company might do.
The PSE is also under pressure to increase the number of viable companies on the exchange after it became widely known that the PSE trails all of its established SE Asian peers in terms of the number of companies listed on its exchange.
There are other factors in play as well, namely, the continued push by property developers to take advantage of the REIT law to recycle capital for new projects, and the continued pressure on non-public firms to raise money to pay for working capital and business expansion in a challenging loan/debt environment.
It’s a “perfect storm” of IPO-encouraging factors, if you will. If 2022 plays out like Q3 and Q4 of 2021 did, the major bottleneck may turn out to be the PSE itself, as it looks to push potential listings around in the name of preventing saturation and/or overlap.
While I recognize the PSE’s interest in maintaining a neat schedule, I think we’re decades behind and that the time for carefully curating entrance to the public market has long since passed. Open the floodgates! The equity must flow.
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