Stock Commentary: CTS Global IPO approved by PSE for April 13th

The global trading firm headed by Edward Lee, the owner of our largest brokerage COL Finance [COL 4.00]got its IPO application approved by the PSE yesterday.

CTS will officially price its offering on March 21, conduct its offering period between March 29 and April 4, and conduct its IPO on April 13.

The Company is selling up to 1,375,000,000 primary common shares at up to P1.00 per share for a 31.59 percent post-IPO public float and a post-IPO market capitalization of P6.9 billion.

Most of the proceeds are allocated to CTS traders for investing in foreign stocks.

The stock trades under the symbol “CTS”. The shares of Edward Lee and the 12 other significant CTS shareholders are subject to a one-year lockup.

MB bottom line

I am pleased that the PSE is proceeding with IPO approvals and I am pleased to add another issue to the calendar.

Longtime MB readers will know that my fixation on ticker symbols can at times overwhelm my attention, and I’m also happy to report that the company introduced the ‘natural’ symbol ‘CTS’ rather than an ungodly initialism of something little-known will use company name.

KTS makes sense. There doesn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary about the rest of the range so far, but they’ve updated their preliminary prospectus so it’s probably worth a look to see if everything is still as it was.

My quick look at CTS’ finances tells me to dig deeper next week, because my first look revealed something of a mixed bag of mental interests: CTS has managed to cut its costs (personnel costs) while simultaneously investing profits in the Soaring high, but at the same time the company has only recently had proof of profitability.

It made money in 2020 and 2021 but lost money in 2018 and 2019.

The curious cat in me wants to dig deeper into these spots to see what might be there.

I’ll admit, however, that the “trust me bro” approach to investing in this issue still puts me off: the dealers feel treated like independent contractors (individual “business units”, according to the prospectus). , and that there is no particular style or approach they use at any given time. I’m curious, but I want to know a lot more.

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