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Johannesburg - The Johannesburg Stock Exchange is forecasting that share sales on Africa’s largest bourse in early 2015 will keep pace with the nine-year high set last year.
“From a listing perspective, we certainly started to see the energy about South Africa as an equity capital raising venue being reinforced” in 2014, CEO Nicky Newton-King said in an interview on Thursday. “We certainly see 2015 maintaining that momentum at the beginning.”
Equity sold on the JSE jumped 58% last year to R147bn, the most since at least 2005, according to data provided by the JSE. The bourse had 23 companies list their securities last year, eight of which were real-estate businesses, the data show.
“While we handle quite extensive pipelines they don’t always come to fruition,” Newton-King said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Africa to be broadcast on Friday. “There’s a lot of activity behind the scenes at the moment. We’re certainly expecting a healthy pipeline.”
Property businesses led the number of initial public offerings after the JSE changed listing requirements to allow for Real Estate Investment Trusts. The FTSE/JSE SA Listed Property Index gained 22% during the past 12 months, outpacing the 8.5% increase of the benchmark FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index.
“We’re actually developing globally a niche positioning in property,” Newton-King said. South Africa is “establishing a reputation as an investor community that likes property companies,” she said.
The JSE is also having “extremely good conversations” with some of Africa’s largest companies about possible secondary listings, Newton-King said, declining to identify the businesses.
“We need to land them,” she said. “Our proposition to them is that here is a deep and liquid capital market that is already connected to the global market. The opportunity for top African stocks to be showcased on another market is becoming quite compelling.”
“From a listing perspective, we certainly started to see the energy about South Africa as an equity capital raising venue being reinforced” in 2014, CEO Nicky Newton-King said in an interview on Thursday. “We certainly see 2015 maintaining that momentum at the beginning.”
Equity sold on the JSE jumped 58% last year to R147bn, the most since at least 2005, according to data provided by the JSE. The bourse had 23 companies list their securities last year, eight of which were real-estate businesses, the data show.
“While we handle quite extensive pipelines they don’t always come to fruition,” Newton-King said in an interview with Bloomberg TV Africa to be broadcast on Friday. “There’s a lot of activity behind the scenes at the moment. We’re certainly expecting a healthy pipeline.”
Property businesses led the number of initial public offerings after the JSE changed listing requirements to allow for Real Estate Investment Trusts. The FTSE/JSE SA Listed Property Index gained 22% during the past 12 months, outpacing the 8.5% increase of the benchmark FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index.
“We’re actually developing globally a niche positioning in property,” Newton-King said. South Africa is “establishing a reputation as an investor community that likes property companies,” she said.
The JSE is also having “extremely good conversations” with some of Africa’s largest companies about possible secondary listings, Newton-King said, declining to identify the businesses.
“We need to land them,” she said. “Our proposition to them is that here is a deep and liquid capital market that is already connected to the global market. The opportunity for top African stocks to be showcased on another market is becoming quite compelling.”
