The 2017 stock mar­ket year: Ger­ma­ny remains behind in new IPOs

An ana­ly­sis of the new issues 2017 inclu­ding the new tra­ding seg­ment Sca­le by Dr. Kon­rad Bösl, Mana­ging Direc­tor of Blätt­chen & Part­ner GmbH in Munich.

In 2017 the­re were ele­ven new issues in Ger­ma­ny (pre­vious year six) with a public offe­ring, four of which were in the new Sca­le tra­ding seg­ment. Only the five IPOs in the fourth quar­ter saved the new issue balan­ce sheet for 2017. With Alz­Chem, only one issuer had to can­cel the IPO short­ly befo­re the start of lis­ting (pre­vious year two). At a good € 2.64 bil­li­on, the issue volu­me was at its lowest level sin­ce 2011 and almost hal­ved com­pared to the pre­vious year. No IPO in Ger­ma­ny rea­ched the bil­li­on euro mark in terms of issue volu­me (pre­vious year one). World­wi­de in 2017 the­re were as many
many new issues as they have not been in ten years. By com­pa­ri­son, new issu­an­ce acti­vi­ty in Ger­ma­ny remain­ed insi­gni­fi­cant, as it has been for years.

I. New issu­an­ce acti­vi­ty in Ger­ma­ny can­not com­pe­te inter­na­tio­nal­ly

The gene­ral con­di­ti­ons for IPOs in Ger­ma­ny in 2017 were very posi­ti­ve. The his­to­ri­cal­ly low inte­rest rate level con­tin­ued and con­tri­bu­ted to strong eco­no­mic deve­lo­p­ment. For the first time in its histo­ry, the DAX pas­sed the 13,000 point mark and rose by around 12.5% in the cour­se of the year. The num­ber of new issues almost dou­bled in Ger­ma­ny, which cor­re­sponds to a world­wi­de increase in IPOs of around 49%. We should not be decei­ved by this par­al­le­lism, as the start­ing level was very low in Ger­ma­ny with six IPOs in 2016. While the volu­me of IPOs increased by 40% world­wi­de, the volu­me of IPOs in Ger­ma­ny decli­ned by around 53%. In terms of the num­ber of new issues world­wi­de, Ger­many’s share of glo­bal new issu­an­ce acti­vi­ty was only just under 0.7%, or 1.5% of the issue volu­me. The weak­ne­ss of new issu­an­ce acti­vi­ty in Ger­ma­ny, which is reflec­ted in this figu­re, has been evi­dent for years. A Euro­pean com­pa­ri­son also shows that Ger­ma­ny, Euro­pe’s lea­ding eco­no­mic nati­on, has been lag­ging behind in terms of new issu­an­ce acti­vi­ty for years. Com­pared to the pre­vious year, the num­ber of new issues in Euro­pe rose by approx. 44.8%, the issue volu­me even by approx. 45.4%.

II. Key fea­tures of new issues in 2017

The­re were a total of ele­ven new issues in Ger­ma­ny in 2017, in which shares were offe­red for public sub­scrip­ti­on. Ten of the ele­ven issuers have their regis­tered office in Ger­ma­ny. It is note­wor­t­hy that five of the issuers still had to report a loss in the year pri­or to the IPO.
This included three of the seven issuers who had their shares lis­ted in the Prime Stan­dard and, again mea­su­red by sales, the two lar­gest new issues HelloFresh (EBIT mar­gin ‑15.2%) and Deli­very Hero (EBIT mar­gin ‑53.8%), as shown in Fig. 14.

Con­ti­nue rea­ding…