(Bloomberg) — 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, Chief Executive Officer Nicky Newton-King said in an interview yesterday. “We certainly see 2015 maintaining that momentum at the beginning.”
Equity sold on the JSE jumped 58 percent last year to 147 billion rand ($12.7 billion), 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 today. “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 percent during the past 12 months, outpacing the 8.5 percent 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.” – BLOOMBERG
