The Asia-Pacific region tightened its grip on the global initial public offering market, and the pipeline looks robust.
The number of initial public offerings (IPOs) year-on-year in Asia-Pacific after nine months increased by 72 percent from 2016 to 690 IPOs, while capital raised is up 28 percent to $53.9 billion. The region saw five of the world’s ten most active stock exchanges by number of IPOs and four by proceeds in 2017 year to date.
Unsurprisingly mainland China exchanges were the most active in the region, hosting 353 IPOs in the period January to September, ahead of Hong Kong (105), Asean (70), Australia (61), Japan (57) and South Korea (42).
Strong Economic Fundamentals
Compared to the same period last year, year-to-date deals and proceeds in Asean were 27 percent and 58 percent higher respectively (2017 IPOs: 70 deals, $6.3 billion proceeds). The Singapore Exchange (SGX) topped the Asean leader board with proceeds of $1.7 billion, which was largely due to the listing of the Singaporean telecoms company NetLink NBN Trust, the largest IPO in Asia-Pacific for the quarter.
Other exchanges in Asean also saw a robust quarter: Malaysia’s KLSE raised $876.9m via 1 IPO, Thailand’s SET raised $624.2m via 8 IPOs and Philippine’s PSE raised $114.8m via 1 IPO.
«Asia-Pacific remained the leader in IPO activity with robust momentum going into the fourth quarter, in the longer term, strong economic fundamentals and continued growth augurs well for the pipeline of companies coming to market.» said Max Loh, EY Asean and Singapore Managing Partner, Ernst & Young LLP.
