Merkado Barkada
September 2, 2024 | 10:31am
Hann Resorts (HANN) [link] has reportedly postponed its P12 billion IPO until sometime in mid-2025. HANN is owned by a South Korean businessman named Dae Sik Han, and is engaged in the casino resort business with a facility in the Clark Freeport Zone. The sources quoted said that the delayed pivot of the US Federal Reserve is to blame for the postponement, as “this is a big IPO” and “[HANN] needs the Fed to also cut rates so international investors will move to Asia.” The sources mentioned that HANN would use the time to reinforce its valuation with strong earnings performances.
MB BOTTOM-LINE: In the dance between buyers and sellers, there are always multiple ways to look at the situation. While it might take the seller a couple of paragraphs to explain why a deal can’t be done at this time (large deal size, high rates, etc), for buyers, the situation might be very different: “too expensive”. I suspect that HANN has a certain valuation in mind after watching our domestic gaming stocks outperform through the post-COVID recovery period (2022-2023), but there just aren’t enough buyers in the market at that price for HANN and its advisors to reasonably sell all the shares in the deal. That doesn’t make the deal a bad deal, but it does tell me that HANN is not in any rush to take on investors. For me, that prompts a follow-up question about the company’s growth story. If they’re willing to delay the IPO by two or three quarters, what does that say about the sweetness of the opportunity?
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