Tale of two debutantes

For Asian equity markets, Tuesday, Oct. 20, was described as a defining moment. Yes, Virginia, it was indeed a historic day with two highly anticipated, tech-heavy public debuts in this part of the global market. Here in Manila, the debutante was Mynt Inc., the parent company of the country’s most preferred e-wallet, GCash, which was listed on the Philippine Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol GCash. Similarly taking its maiden float on the other side of the region, in Seoul, Elice—a neocloud and AI data center infrastructure provider—was listed on Kosdaq, the Korean Stock Exchange. I was curious about the developments of Elice’s IPO, which I had learned about in September when I attended the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul, an event focused on AI as a game-changer. From what I’ve read, GCash and Elice both debuted on a wave of intense pre-market and retail hype—oversubscribed!