Malaysia’s 99 Speed Mart Retail opened higher in its stock market debut on Monday after the country’s top mini-market chain retailer raised $542.8 million in the country’s biggest listing in seven years.
99 Speed Mart’s stock opened at $0.42, 12.1 per cent higher than its initial public offering price of $0.37 a share, on the Malaysian stock exchange.
The stock rose as much as 14.5 per cent to hit $0.42 per share in early deals before paring gains a little, while the local benchmark stock index was down around 0.5 per cent.
99 Speed Mart, founded by Lee in 1987 as a traditional sundry store, plans to use proceeds from the IPO to open about 250 stores annually until 2027 to reach around 3,000 from the 2,526 as at December 31, 2023, its prospectus showed.
Last week, it posted a 66.3 per cent on-year jump in second quarter net profit to $28.865 on the back of a 8.2 per cent revenue rise to 2.4 billion, driven by higher sales from new outlets and its e-commerce platform, according to stock filing.
99 Speed Mart’s IPO was Malaysia’s largest since South Korea’s Lotte Chemical Titan Holding’s listing in 2017.
The listing was also Southeast Asia’s biggest IPO since Amman Mineral Internasional’s listing in Indonesia in July last year.
The positive debut by 99 Speed Mart could bode for upcoming listings in Malaysia. Proceeds raised from Malaysian IPOs have doubled to $1.3 billion so far this year from $593 million the same period a year ago, according to LSEG data, making it the best performer in Southeast Asia this year.
Bursa Malaysia chief executive Muhamad Umar Swift told Reuters last week that he was looking at a healthy pipeline into 2026.
Upcoming listings could include Malaysian mobile data service company U Mobile, which is planning a domestic IPO that is expected to raise more than $500 million as early as the first half of 2025, Reuters has reported.
The positive IPO market comes against the backdrop of a strong stock market where the local benchmark stock index’s has risen around 13 per cent in 2024, on course for its best annual performance in well over a decade.
- Reporting by Yantoultra Ngui; Editing by John Mair, of Reuters,
