The Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) recorded 5 IPOs in Q1 2022, compared to 8 in the same period last year. All of them took place on NewConnect, and the total value of the offers amounted to PLN 16 million (EUR 3.5 million), which means a decrease of 99.1% compared to 2021, when 8 IPOs with a total value of 1 were recorded, PLN 8 billion (EUR 394.6 million), according to the “IPO Watch Europe” report prepared by the consulting company PwC.
The largest debut on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (NewConnect) in Q1 2022 was the offer of the medical industry company SDS Optic worth PLN 11 million (EUR 2.4 million). The second and third place went to the producer of computer games Road Studio (offer worth PLN 2 million) and Eco5Tech – a company from the property technology sector (offer worth PLN 1.9 million), respectively, underlined.
“Therefore, we should not expect large transactions, especially in Poland and the countries of the Central and Eastern Europe region, earlier than in the second half of 2022, and perhaps only next year. At the same time, many issuers treat the current turmoil as a transitional period and are increasingly planning a 2-4-year debut on the stock exchange. Globally, the decline in IPO activity was also very noticeable, but thanks to the relatively high activity in the Asia-Pacific region, in the first quarter of 2022, all global markets combined saw a slightly smaller decline in activity than in Europe (72% decline in value and 61 % decline in the total number of IPOs globally).
It is worth noting that the number and value of IPOs in the first quarter were still greater than in the corresponding periods in 2019 and 2020, ”said Bartosz Margol, director of the PwC capital markets team, quoted in the release. A decline in IPO activity in 2022, both in Europe and globally, was predicted and expected in the last months of the previous record year. The deteriorating economic conditions and economic prospects were additionally aggravated by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the material also shows.