The Federal Government had next year’s federal election firmly in its sights with this budget, and retirees were among the beneficiaries of its fiscal largesse.
In the 2019 federal election, Labor’s proposal to abolish cash refunds for excess franking credits went down like a lead balloon. So, will the $3 million cap proposal see Labor revisit history?
This little known miner topped the IPO listings for 2021
2019-20 was a dormant year for the IPO market. Unforgiving and callous, even promising companies with decent runs on the board were stopped dead in their tracks. Latitude Financial, Property Guru, Retail Zoo and in the US, Ferretti, and We Company, all had their IPO plans pulled. In part it was a weaker global economy, and the rate of disruption was quite there. Covid-19 changed everything.
Looking back on the year that just passed, the Australian IPO market recorded a total number of 78 new listings. The IPO market was given a massive boost after the pandemic prompted the Federal Government to resort to the release of $311bn in stimulus payments. The cashflow boost program together with infrastructure stimulus brought forward the move to digitise which spurred an IPO bonanza. The best performers were microcaps with exposure to the gold sector and mining services. The market petered out towards the end of the year despite making a promising start to 2021.
Deals were getting done, but performance starting to wane, a summary of the top and bottom end is as follows:
The best performing IPO of the year goes to Firebird Metals Ltd (ASX:FRB). It’s share price more than tripling since its IPO back in March, closing up 225%. The second highest performing IPO was Pentanet (ASX:5GG) rising 172% since making its ASX debut back in January. On the opposite side of the scales, Audeara (ASX:AUA) was the worst performing IPO falling by 50.50% and closely behind was OZaurum Resources (ASX:OZM) which fell 50%.
Highly anticipated online property exchange Pexa Group (ASX:PXA) finished 0.1% higher in its trading debut on Thursday after raising about A$1.2 billion ($899 million) in Australia’s largest initial public offering so far this year. It was a flop. Billed as the IPO to watch, investors are blaming the company’s high listing price as the reason. Shares opened at $16.68 on Thursday morning, down 2% per cent below their IPO price. Shares closed at $17.15c.
Looking forward into the new year, the IPO list is by no means empty. There are 44 company’s due to list over the next few months. The ones to watch are 29Metasls (ASX:29M), Best and Less Group (ASX:BST), Openn Negotiation (ASX:OPN) and Lumos Diagnostics (ASX:LDX).
