LOGISTICS company GLP is seeking to list its China business in an initial public offering (IPO) next year, said its backer Hopu Investment Management.
“We’re preparing for an IPO of the China business in 2026,” said Gunther Hamm, a partner at Hopu and a board member of GLP. He was speaking on a panel at the SuperReturn Asia conference in Singapore on Thursday (Sep 18).
The move toward a potential listing comes after the sale of GLP’s non-China business to Ares Management Corp, in a deal that was completed earlier this year.
When that transaction was announced last October, “we couldn’t have even thought of monetising the China portion of the business”, said Hamm, given the market conditions at the time. Since then, there has been a revival of IPOs in Hong Kong, where listing proceeds have soared to a four-year high.
Bloomberg Intelligence credit analysts Andrew Chan and Lisa Zhou wrote in a note that an IPO could “provide significant debt-reduction benefits for the parent company”.
GLP operates and manages more than 450 logistics facilities across 70 cities and municipalities in China, according to its website. Founded in 2009, the firm has expanded into investment management, data centres and renewable energy, while taking advantage of demand for warehouse space driven by China’s e-commerce boom.
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In 2010, GLP raised S$3.9 billion in Singapore’s biggest IPO in more than a decade. The warehouse operator was backed by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC, before it was bought by a consortium including Hillhouse Capital Management and Hopu Investment for S$16 billion in 2018.
The deal was Asia’s largest buyout at the time.
