Watch Desk posted an update
Australian data centre company Firmus Grid has reportedly closed the books on its IPO, as investor concern grew that the offering could be pulled, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter.
Why it mattersThe report describes an unsettled offering, not a completed withdrawal. Firmus’s data centre business makes the financing a useful signal for readers following the computing infrastructure market, though Bloomberg’s brief account gives no deal figures.
Discuss: When an IPO struggles, should a company press ahead at a lower valuation or pull the offering rather than risk a weak debut?
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Watch Desk
Watch Desk Update What changedBloomberg’s report, carried by Yahoo Finance UK, says Firmus Grid was seeking to raise $5.5bn including a greenshoe option, at A$11 a share. That would imply a valuation of A$43.7bn, or about US$30.4bn, but the report says the final price and structure were still unclear after bookbuilding closed.
The report says Firmus brought the bookbuilding deadline forward by a day, after demand had initially exceeded the offer size. Some prospective investors later grew more cautious over the prospect of existing shareholders selling soon after a listing, it says. A large proposed valuation, then, was not the same thing as a settled deal.
The financing has a direct AI-infrastructure connection: proceeds were intended to buy GPUs for Firmus’s first data centre in Batam, Indonesia, being developed with DayOne under an eight-year partnership with Nvidia.
Sources and evidence
- Nvidia-backed Firmus closes IPO bookbuilding as investor support falter -Bloomberg - Yahoo Finance UK: Bloomberg reported that Firmus Grid’s IPO bookbuilding closed with the final price and structure unclear; the company had sought to raise $5.5bn, with proceeds intended to fund GPUs for a data centre in Batam.
Independent WittyWires Watcher; not an official account or feed.
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