2021 was an exciting year for initial public offerings (IPOs) and placements. 55 companies with an offer price greater than A$20 million made their debut on the ASX during the year. Up a staggering 62% from the year before! Secondary placements experienced a more modest increase, up 6% from 2020.

Most equity capital market (ECM) activity took place in the small cap end of the market. Providing a material opportunity for institutional small cap managers like Firetrail to add value for their investors.

In this article, we analyse the success of small cap IPOs and placements in 2021, provide key takeaways for investors, and what to expect in capital markets in 2022. We conclude that corporate activity will remain elevated in small companies throughout 2022. Creating meaningful opportunities for investment managers willing to do the work to identify the best opportunities.

IPOs and placements outperformed in 2021

It wasn't just the sheer number of IPOs and placements that broke records in 2021. Together, new ASX-listings raised a total of A$12 billion! Among them were a record number of billion-dollar floats, such as APM, SiteMinder and PEXA.

On the first day of trading, these IPO companies outperformed the market by an average of 20%. However, we did see this outperformance moderate by the end of the year.

We saw the inverse occur in the market for secondary offerings. Average day one performance hovered around 10.1%. While calendar year performance rose to 15.4%! The total amount raised by secondary offers was A$37.7 billion.

But that doesn't seem like an accurate reflection of performance from a market perspective.

Careful stock selection is critical

If we adjust for the size of the raise, the story changes. We see big declines for first day and calendar year performance for both IPOs and secondary placements. Suggesting that the relative performance is skewed by a handful of big winners.

In the IPO space, performance was dominated by a few key players. DGL, a chemical manufacturing and storage group, and Trajan, an analytical science and devices company, experienced greater than 100% returns in the calendar year.

To account for this asymmetry, we took the median performance for the calendar year. The median return for IPO stocks was just -4%. Providing a more accurate reflection of capital market performance.

Clearly, an ability to pick winners is key to harnessing value from corporate activity. The chart below compares the relative performance of IPOs that raised more than $50 million. While average performance was strong, there were more losers than winners.

Through deep fundamental analysis, Firetrail were able to pick the winners this year. The median return from our IPO participation was 18% for the 2021 calendar year (shaded in grey in Figure 1).

Careful selection is also key for managers trying to maximise returns from secondary placements. In 2021, we saw a wide dispersion in results.

The best returning secondary issuances were in companies in need of balance sheet repair. The average placement in this category delivered 33% excess. In many instances we observed that the 'raise' was already priced in by the market. Hence recapitalisation was the catalyst to refocus the market on business fundamentals.

The market also rewarded companies raising capital to grow organically far more than M&A. Raisings for growth dominated the market (Figure 3). In contrast, there were few M&A bargains in 2021 due to intense competition for assets. Many companies were willing to pay listed multiples for strategic acquisitions.

Opportunities will remain elevated in small caps in 2022

ECM events are a consistent source of opportunity and strong returns for small cap investors. Access to these opportunities is key, and the Firetrail team have a strong track record of leveraging our corporate relationships and fundamental expertise to access attractive corporate opportunities for our investors. Since the inception of the Firetrail Team's Small Companies strategy in 1998, previously the Macquarie Australian Small Companies Fund, these events have contributed an average 20% of the total excess returns, or ~3% p.a.

Looking ahead to 2022, low interest rates and high valuations will continue to encourage companies to raise capital. We expect ECM activity to remain elevated and to continue delivering material opportunities for small cap investors like Firetrail.

Conclusion

2021 was a year of frantic ECM activity and we see no sign of this abating as we move through 2022. As small cap investors, we are excited by the opportunity and potential returns offered by IPOs and secondary placements in the coming year. Our experience shows that meaningful returns are out there if managers are willing to do the work to find them!

Funds operated by this manager:

Firetrail Absolute Return Fund, Firetrail Australian High Conviction Fund

In 1997, Jeff Sprecher of the US, who had spent years developing power plants, decided to provide transparent pricing to the US power market. Well before electronic trading of financial securities became the norm, Sprecher paid US$1 for a tech start-up so he could build a web-based trading platform.

For three years, Sprecher and his team met oil, natural-gas and power companies to learn what people sought in a trading platform. Some of the innovations that resulted included pre-trade credit limits, counterparty credit filters and electronic trade confirmations - novelties taken for granted now. By 2000, the trading platform was set for launch. Sprecher renamed the shell company Intercontinental Exchange to highlight the trading platform's ability to cross oceans, let alone borders.

In 2001, the International Petroleum Exchange of London wanted to evolve from floor to electronic trading. At the time, the exchange was a regional one that offered oil futures contracts and had less than 25% share of the global oil futures market. Intercontinental Exchange, which promotes itself as ICE, saw an opportunity to branch into energy futures and clearing and purchased the exchange. Thanks to the ability of ICE's platform to increase price transparency, handle high volumes efficiently and lower transaction costs, the volume of oil futures traded on what is now called ICE Futures Europe swelled. A regional exchange grew into a global one.

From 2007, the year ICE listed (with the ticker ICE), the company went on a buying spree of exchanges. The company snared the New York Board of Trade, which barters commodities such as cocoa, coffee and cotton, ChemConnect, which trades chemicals, and the Winnipeg Commodity Exchange, now ICE Futures Canada that mainly trades canola. A sign of ICE's ambitions was the company's failed bid that year for the commodities-based Chicago Board of Trade.

Undaunted, the ICE takeover quest continued such that ICE, which earned US$6.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2020, owns an exchange arm that boasts 12 global exchanges and six clearing houses that service the energy, agricultural and financial sectors. The haul includes the purchase in 2013 of the New York Stock Exchange, the world's biggest by volume. Among feats, ICE hosts nearly 66% of the world's traded oil futures contracts and is the world's leading clearer in energy and credit defaults. On top of that, ICE's exchange arm manages key global benchmark contracts. This list includes Brent oil, Euribor, natural gas, sterling short and long rates and sugar barometers of performance.

In recent years, ICE has branched out such that the exchange business, which brought in 55% of ICE revenue in fiscal 2020, is one of three divisions. The second arm, responsible for 27% of revenue in fiscal 2020, is the fixed income and data services business that sells data and technology to help investors make and execute decisions. ICE assess prices for roughly three million fixed-income securities spanning about 150 countries in 73 currencies, as well as providing advanced analytics and indexes for fixed-income markets.

ICE's other business is mortgage technology, which pulled in the remaining 18% of revenue in fiscal 2020. This arm has digitalised the mortgage process to reduce costs and increase efficiencies. The ICE mortgage business is the largest to automate the entire process, is the industry's leading platform with more than 3,000 customers, partners and investors, and the industry's only loan registry. This platform offers significant growth potential as more US mortgage originators are expected to turn to ICE's digitised offering.

ICE is a promising investment in three ways. The first is that the exchanges and other businesses possess sustainable competitive advantages that form a daunting 'moat' for the parent company - where moat is a colloquial way to say a company is protected from competition. Most of ICE's earnings are derived from trading and clearing fees from the exchange businesses and linked data. These businesses are moated because they enjoy economies of scale, network effects and industry structure that intimidate would-be competitors. Another moat for ICE is that when it comes to derivatives and listing, there are limited substitutes. The holder of benchmark contracts is favoured in negotiations, even if others are seeking to undercut on price.

A second advantage ICE enjoys is that the company is vertically integrated - it controls the execution and clearing of contracts. This enables the company to exert pricing power, attract volumes, and improve counterparty and systemic risk management.

The other advantage that makes ICE an attractive investment is the company is well managed. While ICE has a history of disrupting others, the Sprecher-led team has prevented ICE being disrupted. Management has steered the business towards attractive industry structures (derivatives exchanges), unique data sources and value-add analytics. As important, the team has largely directed ICE away from equities exchanges, where regulation and technology have upended the pricing power and volumes over the past 15 years. All up, ICE is well placed to provide compounded returns for its investors for the foreseeable future.

ICE, as do all businesses, faces risks. One is that the company's revenue is tied to trading volumes over which it has little influence. The fact that trading volumes often increase in turbulent and falling markets means that ICE is well placed to weather a market slump that falls short of a prolonged 'bear market' where trading was light. ICE's other risk is that its business is exposed to adverse changes to regulations. Moves by regulators to separate execution and clearing, and actions that might reduce trading volumes, would disrupt ICE's revenue. ICE is protected to some extent in this regard because regulators are aware that such moves against exchanges, especially ones that feature large derivatives trading, would boost trading costs, hamper innovation and, possibly, increase systemic risks.

ICE, thus, is well placed in a world where Sprecher's vision has helped electronic trading become the norm.

Sources: Company filings and website.

Apparently, Confucius did not say "One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words" after all. It was an advertisement in a 1920s trade journal for the use of images in advertisements on the sides of streetcars. Even without the credibility of Confucius behind it, we think this saying has merit. Each month we share a few charts or images we consider noteworthy.

You may have noticed that the tech sector has been under pressure lately. Bank of America's monthly fund manager survey shows allocations to the sector are at the lowest point since 2006 - yet in the unlisted world CB Insights has tallied up a surge in "unicorns" to 1,000! Totus Capital made a great point on the significant dispersion between different tech companies' accounting treatment of R&D spend. And ASX-listed fintech Douugh's "accumulated revenue" chart, as highlighted by  @lukewinchester9, was definitely an innovative approach to presenting financials. On the COVID-19 front, Bloomberg shows global air traffic is still less than half pre-pandemic levels, while The Economist shows most countries trending back towards "normalcy" - with China a notable exception.

Tech net allocation at lowest level since 2006

Source: Bank of America (via @daniburgz)

Now there are 1,000 unicorns

Source: CB Insights

Huge differences in how ASX software companies account for R&D spend

Source: Totus, livewiremarkets

Accumulated revenue chart by ASX-listed Douugh (DOU)

Source: Douugh Limited, @lukewinchester9

Global air traffic less than half pre-COVID level

Source: Bloomberg

The Economist's "Normalcy Index"

Source: The Economist