Today is the Top Line IPO!

Top Line [TOP] will make its PSE debut this morning. The Lim Family’s fuel retailer conducted its offer at P0.31/share, which was a significant discount from its indicative offer price of P0.38/share, and a huge discount from the initial P0.78/share from its 4QFY24 prospectus. The all-primary firm offer looks to raise P732 million, which TOP will use to expand its network of service stations in Central Visayas.

  MB BOTTOM-LINE:  Nobody is entitled to anything from the market, so I have a certain amount of admiration for companies that push through with these kinds of growth transactions during times of great financial turmoil. While the IPO paperwork is relatively quick to complete, the process usually takes a couple of years from idea to execution, and there’s simply no way for TOP’s team to have reasonably foreseen what is happening this week when they got the ball rolling in 2023/24. We saw the same thing with the companies that went public right after the devastating COVID crash, like AREIT and DDMPR. The silver lining today is that the Monday bloodbath that many in the US feared for the American exchanges never materialized. Yes, the DOW was down 1,200 points in the early hours of trading, but that initial plunge has been largely erased to the point where the DOW was only down 70 points at the time I’m writing this (2 AM Philippine time). These are wild times. “Wow, at least the market didn’t implode today” isn’t the most comforting thing, but that’s about all we have this morning. 
 

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