Indonesia's 26 IPOs launched in the January-to-April period this year dwarfed the number of listings on other South-east Asian bourses, such as Malaysia's eight and Singapore's six.THE true action in Indonesia still lies in the debt capital markets, as a double-digit number of public listings in the first four months of 2020 masked a year-on-year fall in the amount of equity funds raised.
The Covid-19 pandemic has otherwise taken a toll on companies’ ability to scrounge up cash, as initial public offering sizes and merger and acquisition deal values shrank on year. More than 98 per cent of the capital raised in Indonesia from January to April came in the form of debt - mostly bonds, but also syndicated loans - according to capital markets data from Bloomberg.
Indonesian bond issues came up to US$15.3 billion for the four months - more than double the US$7.2 billion in the year-ago period - with Bloomberg’s regional data head, Vatsan Sudersan, citing “liquidity tightness among Indonesian local banks” as a possible reason. Bloomberg data showed that the loan-to-deposit ratio of the five biggest Indonesian banks by total assets has increased steadily from an average of 90 per cent in early 2017, to 97 per cent as at end-2019 - higher than the comparable ratios at Malaysia and Singapore lenders.