Muted Stock Quote: DigiCo's Turbulent Market Debut

The Australian data center owner and operator DigiCo Infrastructure REIT has had a rocky start following the country's largest initial public offering (IPO) in six years. On Monday, DigiCo's stock prices continued their downward trend on the second trading day, falling by 6.8% to 4.24 Australian dollars after already dropping a substantial 11.7% earlier in the session. The issue price was originally set at 5.00 Australian dollars. The company, which raised 2 billion Australian dollars through the IPO, hoped for growing investor interest in data centers given the demand for AI-based services. Nonetheless, investment research firm Morningstar expressed concerns last month, assigning a "high uncertainty" rating with a fair valuation of 3.40 Australian dollars per share. DigiCo manages a portfolio of data centers valued at 4 billion Australian dollars in the USA and Australia. Part of the IPO proceeds is to be used for the acquisition of two large, adjacent data center sites near Sydney, with a contractually secured capacity of 20 megawatts. Shares in asset manager HMC Capital, which retained 18.2% of DigiCo's shares after the IPO, also fell by 11.3%. HMC Capital thus emerged as the biggest loser in the Australian benchmark index, which declined by 0.4%.