Dear readers, recently I read that there are likely to be 3 companies which are going to list on Singapore Catalist.
The 3 companies are Goodwill Entertainment, Attika and Food Innovators Limited.
Goodwill Entertainment is in the Karaoke business which includes HaveFun karaoke outlets among its 11 outlets.
Attika is an Interior Design company.
Food Innovators Limited is a Japanese restaurant operator.
Singapore is South-east Asia worst IPO performer with only 1 IPO this year-to-date: Singapore Institute of Advanced Medicine (SAM) Holdings. SAM stock IPO offer price was $0.23 and now the stock traded at $0.083 at the close of trading on 9 Oct 24.
Amidst the scarcity of IPOs here on Singapore stocks markets, I also read in an article that the upcoming listing of the above 3 stocks on the Singapore stocks is something for investors to cheer about.
This has me musing. Yes, amidst the lacklustre IPO scene on Singapore year-to-date this year, we definitely welcome the 3 potential IPOs. But if investors and the stock market are to cheer just because of the potential listing of these 3 IPOs and think that because of this, the Singapore stocks markets is given an assurance that it is still attractive, then I would think that the thinking is not correct.
We should measure the Singapore stock market by how well IPOs fare after listing on the Singapore stock markets, rather than focusing just on the numbers. In my brief recollection, there are quite a number of Singapore listed companies which head south in price such that they trade below IPO offer price, after listing.
When it comes to IPO, I read somewhere that most of the time, money is already made pre-IPO for the institutional investors. At IPO, with no benchmark of previous trading price to begin with, many investors cannot really gauge as they also do not research, whether the IPO offer price they pay is good price to begin with.
And that is why I shun Singapore IPOs: as a note, I am still holding on to Hutchinson Port Holdings (HPH) which I bought at IPO in 2011. HPH at IPO was touted in all its fanfare, with mentions of one of Asia’s largest port operators, and with links to a particular Asian billionaire. But just look at the price of HPH now. Referenced to the HPH episode, it is not a given that the overseas large Reits that the SGX is attracting will do well on the Singapore stocks markets!