Alphawave IPO flops 19 prcent after London Stock Exchange debut, global tech firms race for funding

Sputnik news agency and radio 11:10 GMT 13.05.2021

 

The Canadian tech firm designing semiconductors for high-speed technologies announced it had conducted an IPO in London, but saw shares crash nearly £600 million in several hours, media reported on Thursday.

 

Shares for Alphawave IP Group Plc plummeted nearly 19 percent following the tech firm's initial public offering (IPO) listing on the London Stock Exchange, Reuters reported.

 

Shares for the Toronto-based chip designer were sold at 337 pence a share despite Alphaware initially pricing the IPO at 410 pence a share worth £3.1 billion.

 

Some £856 million of the IPO shares were sold, with £360 million new shares and £496 million from current equity holders. Investment bank JPMorgan Chase and UK bank Barclays coordinated the global IPO.

 

"London was the obvious venue for the listing of our silicon IP business because both the industry and the business model were born in the UK", Alphawave Executive Chairman John Lofton Holt said in a statement.

 

The news comes just months after UK food delivery company Deliveroo launched its IPO in London amid record demand in the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

 

UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak hailed the listing at the time as a "true British tech success story" that had created "thousands of jobs".

 

Several Chinese firms have listed their firms on stock exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong, with mixed results.

 

Chinese authorities suspended Ant Group's historic $37 billion IPO listing in early November after company founder Jack Ma criticised the Chinese government for excessive bureaucracy at an event in October.

 

The company was forced to restructure as a financial holding firm under the People's Bank of China (PBoC), it was reported in January.

 

Chinese search engine giant Baidu also completed roughly $2 billlion in fundraising in March for Kunlun, the company's artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker, allowing the semiconductor wing to form as a separate entity.