Indonesia’s Blibli Targets $528M IPO for November

Indonesian eCommerce company Blibli is set to go public next month with an initial public offering (IPO) worth up to $528.9 million.

According to published reports Monday (Oct. 17), the Jakarta company, which is backed by the Djarum Group, aims to sell as many as 17.77 billion shares at a sale scheduled for Nov. 1 through Nov. 3.

Blibli plans to use the proceeds of the sale for platform development and to pay off bank loans.

Related: GoTo’s Post-IPO Ascent Is Far From a Done Deal

This IPO comes on the heels of Indonesian tech giant GoTo Group’s $1.1 billion public listing earlier this year. BuklaLapak, a competitor of Blibli, went public in 2021 with a $1.5 billion IPO.

Learn more: US 8-Month Tech IPO Drought Is Longest in This Century

It’s also happening in the wake of a long “IPO” drought in the U.S., with declines in the stock market scaring off investors in tech startups.

High inflation has led the Federal Reserve to up interest rates, lowering enthusiasm for growth stocks that were huge winners during the boom of 2021. Tech startups have been hit hardest, but overall U.S. IPO volumes are down 94% year-over-year, with just $7 billion raised so far compared to $110 billion as of mid-September.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Matt Walsh, head of tech equity capital markets at SVB Securities, noted that there was “a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the market right now, and uncertainty is the enemy of the IPO market.”

Read more: Global Sellers Localize Payments to Convert Abandoned Carts in APAC

PYMNTS also looked at the state of eCommerce in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region in “The Emerging APAC Opportunity,” a collaboration with Citcon, finding that merchants lose 52% of their APAC sales to cart abandonment.

It’s a staggering statistic, but as Tammy Phan, CEO of luxury reCommerce site Luxe Du Jour told PYMNTS, it is quite normal for companies selling into the region.

“The problem we have is making [payments more] streamlined and accessible to our clientele. When a client wants to purchase from our Canada location, they want to be able to transfer funds easily, but we can’t open bank accounts with every country we operate in. That’s a problem we struggle with when it comes to payments.”