Saturday 17 January 2009

Greenlight, but only a third take IPO plunge in KL

Only a third of companies approved for public listing last year by Malaysia’s securities watchdog did so, with the remainder deciding that weak market conditions were too dicey to chance.

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Guanyu said...

Greenlight, but only a third take IPO plunge in KL

By PAULINE NG, IN KUALA LUMPUR
17 January 2009

Only a third of companies approved for public listing last year by Malaysia’s securities watchdog did so, with the remainder deciding that weak market conditions were too dicey to chance.

Ten out of the 31 initial public offerings (IPOs) approved by the Securities Commission (SC) took the plunge last year, four each on the main board and Mesdaq Market and two on the second board.

However, deferred IPOs from 2007 swelled the total number of listings last year to 23, five fewer than in 2007.

One of the 21 IPOs deferred last year was CapitaLand’s proposed retail mall Reit with proposed assets of about RM2 billion (S$830 million). In August, company executives had maintained the listing would proceed, but thought better of it as market conditions soured.

Seven of the 31 approved IPOs were big caps with at least RM500 million in market capitalisation. The largest IPO for 2008 was Telekom Malaysia International - the cellular and international unit of state utility Telekom which was hived off in a separate listing. The SC said the remaining 21 IPOs were expected to raise RM2 billion and represented a potential market capitalisation of RM6.5 billion.

These IPOs ‘are timing their listings to take into account the current uncertain market environment’ after the commission approved their extension of time, the SC said in a statement yesterday.

Once approved for listing, companies have six months to do so, but may request an extension of time if it is justified. The average extension, according to SC, is six months.

In tandem with global bourses, the Malaysian exchange took a major hit last year, suffering a loss of nearly half its market capitalisation. In view of the increasingly gloomy economic outlook, which is expected to hurt corporate earnings and which has also spooked investors and consumers into holding on to cash, the equities market is expected to be in a bear phase for the greater part of the year.

This is reflected in the unit trust segment, the number of submissions relating to the industry that were approved by the SC in the fourth quarter amounting to only 43. It was 85 in the quarter before and 97 in the same quarter 2007.

The local bourse is expected to see a dip in listings this year. In any event, the SC has proposed merging the main and second boards into a ‘unified board’, and is to provide more details of how this is to be done in the current quarter.

There are currently 977 listed issues on the Malaysian exchange - 635 on the main, 221 on the second and 121 on the Mesdaq technology bourse.