Abacus Securities thinks SM REIT and Prime Infra IPOs will be delayed and that GCash IPO will happen 'overseas'

Nicky Franco, head of research for Abacus Securities [link], said that the SM REIT (SREIT) and Prime Infrastructure (PRIME) mega-IPOs will probably not happen in 2024 based on PSE President Ramon Monzon’s expectation of about P40 billion in total IPOs this year on the PSE. Mr. Franco reasoned that since both SREIT and PRIME are likely to list nearly $1 billion each (~P56 billion), the number quoted by Mr. Monzon must not include those two transactions as part of the list of IPOs that the PSE is expecting to happen this year. Regarding the possible GCash IPO, Mr. Franco said that the IPO “will be done overseas”, that “the odds favor that Mynt will list this year”, and that the Mynt management team has likely already “done a lot of the groundwork preparatory work” to execute the listing.

MB BOTTOM-LINE: Globe [GLO 1806.00, up 0.9%; 442% avgVol] issued a clarification based on Mr. Franco’s comments to reiterate their plan to be “push-button-ready” for an IPO, but were noticeably silent on the parts about GCash listing on a foreign exchange. An IPO on a foreign exchange would make it difficult for investors to take part in the IPO. The intent of the Mynt team to list overseas is new news to me. Not sure how I missed that, or what tea leaves I should have been reading to come to this answer. At least on the PSE we always have the PSE EASy platform that we retail traders can use to try and get a piece of a big IPO, but that same level of access is likely not available on whatever exchange the Mynt/GCash team will use this year to list. Mr. Franco’s inferences on the SREIT and PRIME delays are solid, but I feel as though Mr. Monzon’s comments about future IPOs have been relatively loose and I’m not prepared to consider his to be reliable enough to do that sort of reverse engineering with his statements. SM Prime Holdings [SMPH 33.75 unch; 210% avgVol] clarified that its REIT IPO is “dependent on market conditions”. As much as it pains me to accept that we’re probably not going to get any mega IPOs this year, I think Mr. Franco is probably right about this one, too. 

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