At a press conference on 8 July, Jacek Socha, Partner and Vice-President at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Poland, and Ludwik Sobolewski, WSE President, presented and commented on the results of the recent IPO Watch Europe Report for Q2 2009.
The Warsaw Stock Exchange was again Europe’s largest market by number of IPOs and second largest by value of IPOs. Between March and June, seven IPOs on the WSE raised €126m. The WSE’s largest IPO was Lubelski W?giel Bogdanka, raising €116m; it was also the second largest IPO in Europe. The largest IPO this quarter was Max Property Group, hosted by London’s AIM market and raising €226m.
European IPO Market by Number of IPOs in Q2 2009Source: PricewaterhouseCoopers – IPO Watch Europe
Jacek Socha described the European IPO market in Q2 and said that two stock exchanges, London and Warsaw, dominated in Europe in terms of offering value. The Vice-President of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Poland mentioned the debut of TESGAS on NewConnect which took place several minutes before the press conference: “I congratulate the company on its IPO on NewConnect today, raising over PLN9m. It is a great success. It supports the conclusion of PwC’s report: alternative trading systems play an important role among European stock exchanges, including the IPO market. Our report confirms that NewConnect’s business concept is right. Small markets are perfectly capable of attracting issuers.”
Number and Value of IPOs by Market
Stock Exchange |
IPOs
Q2 2009 |
Offering
value |
WSE |
7 |
126 |
NYSE Euronext |
6 |
1 |
|
4 |
22 |
|
3 |
258 |
Deutsche Börse |
3 |
5 |
NASDAQ OMX |
2 |
28 |
Borsa Italiana |
2 |
16 |
Swiss Exchange |
1 |
- |
|
28 |
456 |
Jacek Socha commented on the recent IPO of Bogdanka and said: “The June IPO of Lubelski W?giel Bogdanka sparked much interest of institutional and individual investors and was very successful. I hope that it heralds a recovery on the Warsaw IPO market and opens the door to other large initial offerings including other state-owned companies like PGE. Meanwhile, we can expect many secondary offerings including the planned issue of new shares of the bank PKO BP.”
The Vice-President of PricewaterhouseCoopers stressed that Q2 was difficult on all European markets. The number and the value of offerings were modestly higher than in Q1 2009, but still much lower than in Q2 2008.
Ludwik Sobolewski pointed out that in addition to its great analytic merits, the PwC Report also has a therapeutic dimension: it can serve to overcome Polish complexes. It also has an educational value as it shows that the capital market is more than huge offerings and large corporations: it also includes smaller markets and offerings, including IPOs in alternative trading systems, and new stock exchange listings without share offerings both in Poland and on other European markets.