Companies hoping that the markets will improve so they can list their businesses on the Australian Securities Exchange may be holding on a little longer after Symal closed flat after its Thursday debut.
After trading down about 1 per cent on the ASX, the $437m business closed at its initial public offering price of $1.85 per share.
The Victoria-based civil construction company had raised $136m, which equated to about four times its annual earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, a deal considered in the market to be reasonably priced.
Symal comes with a strong reputation in the construction industry, providing sub-contracting services for a number of big-name builders under the leadership of founder Joe Bartolo.
However, investors typically shy away from buying shares in the space because of the volatile nature of construction company earnings.
The hope was that the three IPOs happening this side of Christmas would all perform strongly, creating a long-awaited window to once again list businesses on the ASX after two years of market volatility has kept it firmly shut.
Those eager to come to market next year include groups such as mining services business Moly Cop and airline Virgin Australia.
Meanwhile, payments company Cuscal lists next week through Bank of America, Bell Potter and Ord Minnett, and that deal is also expected to open on the market relatively flat.
Some investors are sidestepping the transaction with the anticipation of falling interest rates and a lower return on equity than some would like.
Cuscal’s book build closed on Thursday, with its market value at $479.1m and shares sold at $2.50 each to raise $336.8m ahead of its November 25 listing.
The price equates to 7.7 times its EBITDA for the 2025 financial year and a dividend yield of 3.7 per cent.
Cuscal’s owners include Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, MasterCard and other mutual banks.
It told the market on Thursday morning that the closing time for the book build had been brought forward to 12pm from 5pm, and the institutional order book had continued to grow, with demand well in excess of shares available.
That deal will be followed by HMC Capital’s DigiCo Infrastructure REIT, which, in contrast, is set for a strong debut as passive index funds will likely take up the opportunity, adding to huge demand from retail investors.
HMC Capital had earlier planned to raise about $2.6bn for the float of its newly acquired data centre assets, but told the market on Thursday that had been upsized by $100m to $2.746bn, which had been underwritten.
The business will have a market value of that size and factoring in debt, it would be have a $4.3bn value.
Retail demand has been strong for the offering, and had initially been set to contribute $1bn to the deal, while institutional investors would have contributed $600m.
HMC Capital was putting in $500m at a minimum and when it bought the iSeek data centres, the firm was paid $250m of the $400m price in DigiCo Infrastructure REIT shares.
Trading starts December 12 for the portfolio, seeded with $2.5bn of strategic operating assets in Australia, purchased from Global Switch and iSeek.
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