IPO market remains flat in Q1

Canada's moribund market for initial public offerings has gone through a third consecutive quarter with no activity, PricewaterhouseCoopers said Thursday.

There hasn't been an IPO on the Toronto Stock Exchange since the first quarter of 2008, when there were three issues worth $113 million. By comparison, there were five IPOs with a value of $191 million in the first quarter of 2007.

"It has been hard to find many signs of life in the IPO market in the past two years, so optimism about the second quarter, and even beyond, is in short supply," says Ross Sinclair, the national leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers'  IPO and income trust services.

 "But that doesn't mean investors have stopped looking for opportunities in other new listings."

Sinclair said the market for structured financial products — investment vehicles created to acquire portfolios of traded shares, bonds or other financial instruments — saw eight new offerings in the first quarter of this year. Those offerings had a value of $394 million, but that was down from the same period in 2008 of 25 issues worth $1.2 billion.

"While not depressed to the IPO levels in our survey, it is interesting to note that these structured products have also shown a steady decline," says Sinclair.

PricewaterhouseCoopers said there were 50 structured products offerings in 2008, valued at $2 billion. In 2007, there were 80 worth $4.3 billion.