Balai Ni Fruitas [BALAI 0.70 pre-IPO] [link] is the latest public offering from the serial entrepreneur, Lester Yu.
Earlier in the week, BALAI set its offer price at a 6.66% discount at P0.70/share, and today the stock officially goes on sale through the PSE EASy platform.
The notification email that PSE EASy sent out says that the minimum order is 10,000 shares (P7,000), and the maximum order is 142,000 shares (P99,400).
The Inquirer quoted a representative from First Metro Investment Corp. (FMIC), the IPO’s underwriter, as saying that BALAI set the price at a discount for the “benefit of future public shareholders of BALAI”.
The FMIC rep said they could have sold the entire amount at the maximum price.
The offer period will run from today through to June 23, with the actual IPO/listing on June 30.
MB BOTTOM-LINE
Companies rarely leave money on the table, regardless of the market conditions.
The whole point of “going public” is to raise money.
That said, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if BALAI set its maximum price artificially high, with the intention all along of discounting it on Pricing Day to make it seem more reasonable/sulit.
When Mr. Yu’s other company, Fruitas [FRUIT 1.12 0.88%] went public in 2019, the maximum offer price was originally P1.99/share, and he discounted that down to P1.68/share.
That’s a larger discount, but it feels like just a different take on the same overall approach. Perhaps that’s also a pretty good way to describe the offering as a whole, not just the pricing strategy.
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