Phnom Penh-based Westline Education Group Co Ltd (WEG) continues to plan to sell shares through an initial public offering (IPO) on the Cambodia Securities Exchange (CSX) Secondary Growth Board “in the coming years” to diversify and increase its funding sources additional schools are opening in more locations across the country, the company chief said on Sept. 5.
WEG co-founder, chairman and CEO Pech Bolen told the Post that his company – which is classified as a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) – has joined the Cambodia Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SERC) Excellence Program and has been certified as “qualified”. was ” to issue shares on a Cambodian stock exchange.
He confirmed that the company is solidifying its position in preparation for the listing, hoping to garner more support from public investors when the day comes.
“Actually, we’re ready to go public, but we still need some time to make our company a bit bigger and stronger to gain public trust,” Bolen said, without giving a specific timeframe.
“We are issuing these securities to ensure that the public, particularly parents of students, have the right to own shares in our school and that we also have additional access to funds to continue to grow our business,” he said.
SERC director-general Sou Socheat told the Post on September 5 that as part of the excellence program, the regulator has provided technical tips for SMEs looking to go public.
He spoke highly of WEG’s potential and expressed optimism that the IPO will help the company grow its business. “[Although] They have funds from other investors, they now want to diversify their funding sources from the capital market to build public confidence and thereby be better able to attract more partners and develop the schools in the future,” he said.
Socheat announced that it is in the process of preparing its corporate governance and financial statements in accordance with stock exchange listing requirements.
According to the company profile on its website, “From a school with 600 students and 70 teachers and staff in 2008, WEG has grown to date to be a leading education group with more than 13,000 students and more than 1,000 teachers and staff in various fields of education. and apprenticeship daughters in 2017.
“Since founding its first school in 2008, the company has been widely recognized as one of the leading education companies – having inspired many local and international education and development communities,” it said.
For reference, the CSX’s Growth Board was launched in late 2015 as a secondary platform to remove some of the barriers to listing and better serve companies with less access to capital or financial resources. But it had failed to attract a single issuer in the years leading up to September 6, 2021, even as the main board saw accelerating growth. To date, only two companies are listed on the Growth Board.
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