Perth – Wednesday 23rd April 2008 - The current low in investor confidence and its reverberations through equity markets had a significant impact on the performances of IPOs coming to market in the March 08 quarter, according to the latest quarterly IPO research by Deloitte Corporate Finance.

Whilst the quarter produced 33 IPOs with a combined capital raising of $415 million, only marginally lower than activity in the March 07 quarter (35 IPOs, $421 million in capital raised), only six of the 33 IPOs in the latest quarter traded at or above their issue price near the end of March, and share prices of all IPOs were down by an average of 27%.

This is a sharp reversal from the March 07 quarter, when 26 of the 35 IPOs traded at or above issue price and share price performance of all IPOs averaged a gain of 48%.

Deloitte Corporate Finance Partner, Mr Andrew Annand, said this trend largely reflected the current equity markets rather than being specific to IPOs.

The March quarter is traditionally a slow quarter, but the full effect of the current mood is yet to be seen. Of the total $415m raised, $275m or 66% was raised in the first two weeks of January reflecting the carry over from previous quarter.

“The March quarter has seen a number of floats deferred and the pipeline of upcoming floats is extremely thin. The Australian Stock Exchange’s upcoming IPO register currently shows only three floats are expected in April, which would be the lowest monthly in more than five years,” Mr Annand said.