Another IPO gets withdrawn at the 11th hour as PropertyGuru pulls the pin

Online real estate company PropertyGuru has cancelled its IPO plans, ahead of a listing that was scheduled for this Friday.

The company was planning to raise between $345m to $380m, with a midpoint of $362m at an offer price of $3.70.

PropertyGuru provides online listing services for real estate markets in the Asia-Pacific, operating primarily in Singapore.

It pulled the trigger on IPO proceedings at the start of this week, but the price point was almost immediately met with scepticism by fund managers.

PropertyGuru was planning to list with an indicative valuation of between $1bn to $1.2bn, which amounts to around 10 times forecast 2020 revenues.

Private equity giant KKR, which owns about a one-quarter stake in PropertyGuru, elected not to sell shares into the IPO after institutional investors indicated a preferred price-point at the bottom end of the target range.

Shifting tide

Today’s pullout makes PropertyGuru the fourth company to can IPO plans in October. It follows the high-profile cancellation of Latitude Financial, along with Retail Zoo and oil & gas services company MPC Kinetic.

While 2019 has been a pretty strong year for IPO activity in the Australian market, the recent shift is indicative of an increased wariness among institutional investors — particularly towards high-growth tech companies.

As part of the broader shift, other high-profile tech stocks such as WiseTech Global (ASX:WTC) and Afterpay (ASX:APT) have also come under fire.

READ: WiseTech’s CEO wants regulators to look at short sellers as JCap strikes again

PropertyGuru, who’s current ownership group also includes TPG Capital and Square Peg, is viewed as a high-growth company but is also expected to be loss-making in the short to medium term.

The company operates in four core south-east Asian markets, including Singapore and Malaysia. If listed on the ASX, its incumbent competitors in the local market would’ve been Domain (ASX:DHG) and REA Group (ASX:REA).

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