Search on for next big stock offering

After historic IPO Of Gcash parent

MANILA, Philippines —  The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) is now on the hunt for the next big initial public offering following Mynt Inc.’s historic P60.9-billion maiden offering. Mynt, the parent company of GCash, recorded the largest maiden offering in the local equities market’s history, surpassing Monde Nissin Corp.’s 2021 IPO record.

“If you think about big names, we’re talking, for example, of Mercury Drug, United Laboratories or Rebisco. I mean, we’ve been trying to run after these companies to convince them to list, but I think that’s really not in their plan,” PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said in an ANC interview.

Monzon, however, said other big companies could be out there, like Mynt.

“What am I thinking about? Well, first, I know there is strong interest among toll operators to list on the exchange once the merger between the two big toll operators is finalized. They want to go to the market to raise capital. So that should be a very big capital raising event,” he said.

Monzon is referring to the planned merger of the tollway units of Metro Pacific Investments Corp. and San Miguel Corp.

“With the change in the real estate investment trust (REIT) memorandum by the SEC expanding the coverage of REITs, we hope to have more REIT listings, not only in real estate, but now more particularly of, well, like I said, toll roads will be one of them,” Monzon said.

“And another one would be data centers, of which VITRO REIT has already indicated its intention to do an IPO,” he said.

VITRO REIT, a wholly owned subsidiary of PLDT’s ePLDT Inc., had earlier planned to conduct an IPO this year, but decided to defer its listing to 2027.

 “They had planned to do it for this year, but being a REIT listing, which is very yield-sensitive, and with the rates being very high now, I thought it was prudent of them to defer their listing to next year, and hopefully rates will go down,” Monzon said.

 After Mynt, Monzon said the country does not have many fintech companies that are interested or ready to list on the PSE at present.

“We have a lot of incubator companies, but I think they’re very small at the moment. So, what other industries are we hoping to see? Well, we hope to have another IPO before the end of the year. This is on shipping and logistics,” he said.

 Cebu-based shipping operator Aznar Shipping Corp. plans to do its IPO in December, potentially raising up to P670 million to fund fleet expansion, shipyard facility development and general corporate purposes.

Meanwhile, Monzon said the PSE is now looking to end the year with projected capital raising value of P180 billion.