【英语财经】股市动荡殃及全球IPO市场 Volatility throws spanner into the IPO works

Almost exactly a year ago, Jack Mawas setting out on an investor roadshow for the world’s largest initial public offering: the New York listing of shares in Alibaba, which raised $25bn for his Chinese ecommerce group. Within hours, the share price had risen by 38 per cent to $92.70, valuing the business at more than $230bn.

However, on Tuesday, 25 August the biggest IPO story of recent times came full circle. Another day of turmoil on China’s equity markets pushed Alibaba’s shares below their listing price of $68 for the first time and looks set to cause repricings or delays for companies coming to the market this September.

“Most leading banks have 10 to 15 IPOs each in the September to October timeline,” says one London-based banker. Several offerings are predicted to be worth more than $1bn.

One of the most closely watched of these will be the IPO of shares in Worldpay, a payments company owned by the private equity groups Advent and Bain Capital.

Worldpay’s owners are seeking a listing as soon as next month that would value the company at as much as ￡6bn, large enough to put it straight into the FTSE 100 index.

Both potential sellers and investors are asking whether this week’s sharp falls will damage investor sentiment towards these sorts of share sales.

During the multiyear bull market for equities, private equity owners have been relentless sellers of portfolio companies via stock market listings. Having used debt, or leverage, to buy out companies, these owners found that selling shares to equity investors provided a more lucrative exit than a trade sale to strategic buyers.

This dynamic looks set to change. “There are leveraged buyouts that need to come out — investors will take their pound of flesh from those companies,” warns Kathleen Smith, principal of Renaissance Capital, a manager of IPO-focused ETFs. “It’s going to be a buyer’s market.

“And then others who can wait may be wise to wait,” she adds, noting that when the Vix index of equity market volatility is high, IPOs are even harder to pull off.

Typically bankers are reluctant to place IPOs when the Vix is above 20, on Monday it hit 40.74, its highest level since August 2011 during the depths of the eurozone crisis. At midday the Vix index was at 29.39.

“It’s going to be a tougher time for the IPO market, because there’s been a reset in the secondary market,” says Mark Hargreaves, a senior portfolio manager at Royal London Asset Management.

In Europe, the September IPO of Worldpay will be joined by the expected privatisation of Poste Italiane, and Deezer, a French rival to music-streaming site Spotify.

Bankers say that the turbulence might lead to some European IPOs that had been softly announced being quietly dropped. However, two of the bigger transactions mooted for later this year — German chemicals company Bayer’s flotation of its material science division, and the IPO of Hapag-Lloyd are still expected to go ahead.

Hapag-Lloyd declined to comment. Bayer reiterated that it planned to float its material science business before mid-2016.

One big investor says: “Of course the volatility will force companies to reassess whether the price they can get is worth it. If it continues, it will likely ruin some IPO plans, as well as some deals in the M&A space.”

While markets in Europe recovered on Tuesday, 25 August, China fell further, suggesting its troubles remain and the IPO market will be the hardest hit.

A handful of large deals are due to be launched in Hong Kong over the next month, with China Huarong, a so-called bad bank created to house problem assets, investment bank CICC, and China Reinsurance topping the bill.

While none of these companies has so far signalled any intention to change their plans, the sell-off in Chinese assets is likely to put pressure on pricing if deals do go ahead.

“In any normal, rational market, you wouldn’t even consider going ahead with an IPO at the moment, if only because of the volatility,” says one senior Asia-based investment banker. “Valuations have come down dramatically.”

Huarong’s only listed competitor, China Cinda, fell below a price to book ratio of one for the first time this week. Most Chinese banks are trading well below that level, while share prices for many insurers have dropped by a third over the past month.

Mainland banking regulators bar financials from selling new shares at a price to book valuation below one, meaning that deals will either need to be postponed or sold to investors at a premium to the market unless stocks rebound.

Christopher Betts, partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom in Hong Kong, notes that continued volatility will probably result in deal delays, and will certainly push pricing down.

“It’s not so disastrous that people think the world is going to end. They hope it’s just a bit of interim turbulence,” says Mr Betts.

Bloomberg data indicate that there are more than $10bn worth of IPOs pending globally that have been announced just in the last three months, including Shred-it, a Canadian document destruction company aiming to raise about C$600m; and Surgery Partners, a Nashville, Tennessee-based surgery centre operator that is targeting more than $400m.

Some IPOs have already been sabotaged by the stock market turbulence. Manulife, Canada’s biggest life insurer, in July shelved plans to list a so-called real estate investment trust, or Reit, in Singapore.

RainDance Technologies, a US biotech company, said this week it would put its planned IPO on ice.

The recent turmoil could endanger other US listings in the pipeline. such as Petco, a private equity-owned pet care company; grocery chain Albertsons; Neiman Marcus, a luxury department store; and SoulCycle, a boutique fitness company known for its celebrity fans and cultish following.

The market for private funding where hot tech companies have raised billions of dollars at high valuations, could be particularly vulnerable.

Reporting by Gavin Jackson and Arash Massoudi in London, Josh Noble in Hong Kong, Robin Wigglesworth and Nicole Bullock in New York and James Shotter in Frankfurt

将近整整一年前，马云(Jack Ma)开始着手为世界最大的首次公开发行(IPO)筹备一场投资者路演。这里说的是阿里巴巴(Alibaba)在纽约的上市，这宗IPO为马云的中国电商集团募集了250亿美元资金。上市交易后数小时内，该公司股价就上涨了38%至每股92.70美元，公司估值超过了2300亿美元。

然而，在本周二，这个近期最大的IPO故事转了一圈又回到了原点。中国股市又一个动荡的交易日，将阿里巴巴股价首次推低至每股68美元的发行价以下。看起来，这场动荡势必将导致今年9月即将进入IPO市场的企业重新定价或推迟入市。

“多数大银行都在9月到10月的时间表上安排了10到15宗IPO，”一位驻伦敦的银行家表示。据预测，有几宗IPO的价值将超过10亿美元。

其中最受关注的IPO之一是Worldpay的IPO。Worldpay是一家由私人股本集团Advent和贝恩资本(Bain Capital)所有的支付公司。

Worldpay的所有者正寻求最早于下月让该公司上市，这将使该公司估值达到至多60亿英镑，体量大到足以直接被纳入富时100指数(FTSE 100)。

潜在卖家和投资者都在问，本周的暴跌是否会损害投资者对这类股票发售的信心。

在多年的股市牛市期间，私人股本所有者一直在通过在股市上市来卖出投资组合中的公司。在使用债务或杠杆收购公司后，这些所有者发现，比起将股票卖给战略买家的股份转让(trade sale)，卖给股票投资者是一种更有利可图的退出方式。

这种态势似乎即将发生改变。“现在存在杠杆式收购的退出需求——投资者会狠敲这些公司一笔，”晋新资本(Renaissance Capital)主要负责人凯瑟琳?史密斯(Kathleen Smith)警告称，“这将是一个买方市场。”晋新资本管理着多只专注于IPO的交易所交易基金(ETF)。

她补充道：“对那些能够等待的人来说，等一等或许是明智的。”她这里指的是，当表征股市波动性的Vix指数高企时，IPO将更加难以获得成功。

通常，在Vix高于20的时候，银行家们都不太愿意安排IPO。而本周一Vix达到40.74，是2011年8月欧元区危机最严重时期以来的最高水平。

“对IPO市场来说，这将是一段更困难的时期，因为二级市场正在经历调整，”伦敦皇家资产管理公司(Royal London Asset Management)高级投资组合经理马克?哈格里夫斯(Mark Hargreaves)表示。

在欧洲，除了9月将举行IPO的Worldpay，国有的意大利邮政(Poste Italiane)预计也将举行IPO，另外还有音乐流媒体网站Spotify的法国竞争对手Deezer。

银行家表示，动荡可能导致一些原本低调宣布的欧洲IPO被悄然取消。然而，酝酿在今年晚些时候举行的两宗较大的IPO——德国化工企业拜耳(Bayer)旗下材料科学业务的上市、以及赫伯罗特(Hapag-Lloyd)的上市——预计还将继续推进。

赫伯罗特拒绝置评。拜耳重申了在2016年年中前让其材料科学业务上市的计划。

一名大投资者称：“这种波动当然会迫使公司重新评估以自己能够得到的定价上市是否值得。如果波动持续下去，很可能会毁掉一些IPO计划、以及一些并购方面的交易。”

尽管欧洲市场在周二有所反弹，但中国股市进一步下跌，这表明它的麻烦仍然存在，而IPO市场将受到最大的冲击。

接下来的一个月里，按计划将有几宗大型IPO在香港举行，为首的将是中国华融(China Huarong)、投行中金公司(CICC)和中国再保险公司(China Reinsurance)的上市。中国华融是一家所谓的坏账银行，为处置房地产问题资产而创建。

尽管这些公司中迄今还没有一家表示有意改变计划，但如果交易真的继续推进的话，中国资产遭遇的抛售很可能会对定价构成压力。

“在任何一个正常、理性的市场，你都根本不会想在此时继续推进IPO，哪怕只是考虑到波动性，”一名驻亚洲的资深投资银行家称，“估值已经大幅下滑。”

本周，华融的唯一一家已上市的竞争对手中国信达(China Cinda)，市净率首次跌至1倍以下。中国多数银行股的市净率目前都远低于1，很多保险公司的股价则在过去一个月里下跌了三分之一。

中国内地的银行业监管机构禁止金融机构发售市净率估值在1倍以下的新股，这意味着要么得推迟这些交易，要么得以高于市场价的价格（除非股市反弹）将股票发售给投资者。

世达律师事务所(Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom)驻香港合伙人克里斯托弗?贝茨(Christopher Betts)指出，市场持续波动很可能导致交易推迟，而且肯定会压低定价。

“事情还没严重到人们认为世界快完蛋的程度。他们相信这只是些许短期动荡，”贝茨称。

彭博(Bloomberg)数据显示，全球而言，仅过去三个月宣布的、即将举行的IPO，总价值就超过100亿美元。计划上市的公司包括，旨在筹资约6亿加元的加拿大文件销毁公司Shred-it，以及旨在筹资逾4亿美元的手术中心运营商Surgery Partners，后者的总部位于美国田纳西州纳什维尔(Nashville)。

股市动荡已经破坏了一些IPO计划。7月份，加拿大最大的人寿保险公司宏利(Manulife)搁置了让一家所谓的房地产投资信托(Reit)在新加坡上市的计划。

本周，美国生物科技公司RainDance Technologies称，将推迟其IPO计划。

最近的市场动荡还可能危及其他一些公司在美国上市的计划，比如由私人股本公司所有的宠物护理公司Petco，连锁超市艾伯森(Albertson's)，奢侈品百货店奈曼?马库斯(Neiman Marcus)，以及因名人粉丝及其带来的狂热追捧而闻名的高档健身公司SoulCycle。

热门科技公司以高估值筹得数十亿美元资金的私募市场，可能会格外容易受到冲击。

加文?杰克逊(Gavin Jackson)、阿尔什?马苏迪(Arash Massoudi)伦敦报道，乔希?诺布尔(Josh Noble)香港报道，罗宾?威格尔斯沃思(Robin Wigglesworth)和尼科尔?布洛克(Nicole Bullock)纽约报道，詹姆斯?肖特(James Shotter)法兰克福报道

译者/何黎