Firmus IPO Officially Shelved: Here’s Why

This week has seen plenty of toing and froing with the Firmus IPO, which has now been officially been shelved, putting a firm pause on what would have been one of the largest listings in Australian history. Institutional markets rejected the aggressive pricing, as the gap between private valuations and public markets became apparent.

Yesterday we made it clear that the earlier A$11 price would not be able to proceed, but there was still hope of a restructured float. Parties have failed to find a workable solution for now, having further impact on Maas Group shares (ASX: MGH), adding a 6.65% decline today to a 22.38% decline on Thursday. Down 32% on the week, MGH holders have taken the public hit from the pulled listing.

What Has Happened With Firmus IPO So Far

The deal was initially marketed at A$11 per share, implying a valuation of approximately A$43.7 billion. When institutional demand failed to materialise at that level, underwriters reportedly attempted a last-ditch price reduction to around A$8.25 per share before the entire process was abandoned. Bookbuilding closed on Thursday, without a confirmed price or structure, and the company formally confirmed the withdrawal today.

The IPO had sought to raise up to US$5.5 billion, including a greenshoe option, with proceeds earmarked primarily for GPU purchases to fund Firmus’s flagship data centre project in Batam, Indonesia. That development, being built alongside DayOne Data Centers, sits at the centre of an eight-year strategic partnership with Nvidia and is designed to scale toward a 360-megawatt, 170,000-GPU AI factory campus.

Despite the headline appeal of that partnership, institutional due diligence surfaced a number of concerns that proved difficult to overcome. Only approximately 5% of Firmus’s sold data centre capacity is currently operational, a figure that compares unfavourably with established regional peers such as NextDC (NXT), which has roughly 25% of its capacity online. The company also projected a loss of approximately A$77 million in the first half of fiscal year 2027, a disclosure that reinforced perceptions of significant execution risk at the marketed valuation.

Structural issues within the deal itself added further pressure, with up to 58% of existing shares set to be freely tradable from day one of listing, raising concerns about an immediate post-debut supply overhang. Compounding that, roughly half of the new IPO shares were reportedly allocated to allow existing investors to top up their holdings, leaving many prospective public market buyers feeling they were being asked to pay a premium primarily to provide liquidity to existing shareholders rather than to fund genuine operational expansion.

The dissolution of Firmus’s joint “Project Southgate” rollout with CDC Data Centres, which emerged shortly before the IPO was pulled, added a further layer of doubt around execution timelines. In its formal statement, the Firmus board said the offer terms “would not appropriately reflect the strength of the company’s business and long-term growth outlook,”.

Private Markets Over Public

With the public listing off the table, Firmus is now turning its attention back to private financing. The company already holds approximately US$2 billion in commitments from a roster of high-profile backers including Nvidia, Blackstone, Coatue Management, and Jane Street. Private funding discussions are described as active, with both existing investors and new parties involved in talks.

The pivot to private markets is not without precedent in the current environment. Capital-intensive AI projects have increasingly found that private funding rounds, where valuations are negotiated bilaterally and disclosure requirements are more limited, offer a more hospitable environment than public listings where quarterly scrutiny and day-one liquidity dynamics can punish early-stage growth stories.

What Next?

The failure of the Firmus float carries implications that stretch beyond the company itself, with DayOne Data Centers, which is pursuing its own proposed listing in the United States, likely to face heightened scrutiny from markets following the Firmus outcome. More broadly, the episode reinforces a pattern emerging across global markets in which AI infrastructure companies with strong private backing and compelling long-term narratives are nonetheless struggling to bridge the valuation gap when they seek public capital.

For Firmus specifically, the near-term path forward depends heavily on whether private funding discussions can be concluded on terms that allow the Batam project to proceed without material delays. The Nvidia partnership provides a credible commercial anchor, and the involvement of Blackstone adds institutional weight that should support ongoing financing conversations. However, the company will need to demonstrate meaningful progress on operational capacity and a clearer route to profitability before a relisting attempt is likely to gain traction with public market participants.

Firmus shelved IPO means that Codan (CDA) will remain the highest valued public tech company on the ASX at A$12.09B for now, but whether this cools the perceived window for public listings is unclear. Anthropic is set to test public market appetite later this calendar year, but that will be a different beast entirely.

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