Capital markets · IPO pipeline
Firmus pulled its ASX IPO two weeks before debut. What did the public never see?
It blamed the market. The list of buyer orders that could test that reason is not something the public gets to see.
vizmaya desk · 12 October 2026
How it works
An IPO is a company selling pieces of itself to the public.
A company is worth some amount of money. It cuts that value into small pieces called shares.
In an IPO (initial public offering), it sells some of those shares to the public for the first time. In return, it gets cash.
Illustration of the basic idea. Not real data.
How it works
The price rests on a list of orders that you never see.
Before shares go on sale, big investors tell the banks how many they want and at what price. That list is the order book.
If orders pile up past the shares on offer, the sale is easy. If they fall short, the company must cut the price or call it off.
Illustration of how an order book works. Not real data.
FactAn example from Oura
Not all the money goes to the company.
Some IPO shares are new, and the company gets paid for them. Others are old shares that current owners sell. The owners get that cash.
Oura planned to sell 50 million shares on Nasdaq at up to $44 each. 36.5 million were old shares. It postponed the deal on 29 September.
Sources: The Next Web, iDevice. Money split is our arithmetic at the top price of $44.
How it works
A listed company must keep telling you things. A private one does not.
Once shares trade on a stock exchange, a company has to publish its results and news that could move its price. Anyone can read them.
A private company mostly answers to the people who own a piece of it.
Illustration of who can check a company's story. Not real data.
FactThis week
days before first trade
Firmus pulled its IPO.
Firmus builds data centres for artificial intelligence. On Friday 9 October it withdrew its application to list on the Australian Securities Exchange. First trades were due on Friday 23 October.
Sources: Forbes Australia, The New Daily, Computing. Withdrawal date is Sydney time.
FactWhat Firmus said
It gave one reason: the market.
Firmus blamed market volatility and conditions. It said it will now look for money from private investors and keep other options open.
Sources: The New Daily, Forbes Australia.
FactIs the market really shaky?
A shaky market would explain Firmus. It would explain Oura too.
Cited market volatility and conditions.
Cited uncertainty in the IPO market, while saying demand was strong.
So Firmus's reason is believable. It is also the kind of reason that is hard to check.
Sources: The Next Web, IFR, Forbes Australia.
FactInterpretation
What would settle it is a list the public never sees.
To know if buyers really walked away, you would need the order book: how many orders, at what prices, from whom.
Reports only describe it. We found no public copy.
Illustration. The real Firmus order book is not public.
InterpretationWhere it goes next
Going private again means fewer people can check the story.
Firmus says it will now raise money from private investors. A private raise comes with less to publish than a listing.
That proves nothing by itself. It does mean the missing order book may stay missing.
The strongest case against us
A failed deal can be the system working.
Buyers said no to a price instead of being talked into it. The withdrawal was public the same week. Other companies pulled deals around the same time.
And "market volatility" may simply be true. Hidden is not the same as wrong. We have not read the documents that would show which it is.
Gaps are part of the story
What we could not find.
- The Firmus filings.The ASX withdrawal notice and the prospectus. We did not read them.
- The order book.No public copy exists that we could find.
- Filing and exchange data.Not enough primary data points for first-day returns, filings or lock-up dates.
That is why this deck has no data charts. We found five quarters of US IPO figures from one data company, below our bar of eight points from primary sources. The three drawings here are labelled as illustrations.
What to watch next
Three things to watch.
- 21 October: Jio Platforms.Its IPO in India is reported to open that day. Reports differ on its size, so we give none.
- Firmus's private raise.Whether it happens, and at what value compared with the listing it dropped.
- The Firmus filings.Who was meant to receive shares, and what it said about customers and partners.
Sources and claims log
19 claims checked. Only the verified ones are on these slides.
Fact, interpretation and not-found items are labelled on each slide. Explainer slides describe how IPOs work in general.
Sources: Forbes Australia · The New Daily · Computing · The Next Web · iDevice · IFR · Angel One · NewsBytes. More from the desk: vizmaya stories.
vizmaya desk · 12 October 2026