Overview
- The institutional bookbuild closed on Thursday, Oct. 8, with banks reporting demand faded and they moved to reduce the institutional price from A$11 toward about A$8.25 to try to salvage the deal.
- The planned float still targets trading around Oct. 22–23 pending approvals, but the repricing effort and investor hesitation leave the listing’s outcome uncertain.
- Investors flagged concrete concerns about Firmus’s fundamentals, noting it runs only two operational data centres, targets roughly 900 MW of future capacity and expects about US$30 billion of borrowings.
- Deal terms would lock 42.4% of shares in escrow while leaving about 57.6% freely tradable at listing, and major backers such as Nvidia, Blackstone and Coatue reportedly are not escrowed, raising resale pressure risks.
- Beyond the market test for this IPO, analysts say the episode signals broader scrutiny for the neocloud model because it depends on timely GPU supply, specialised cooling and secured power and water for large-scale builds.