Bukalapak soars 25% as Indonesia's biggest IPO fuels tech excitement

Bukalapak, which means "open stall" in Bahasa, works with 7 million agents, or "mitra", primarily street kiosks and mom-and-pop shops, who it connects to consumer goods distributors, narrowing their supply chain and the costs of their wares.

It focuses on areas outside top-tier cities in the archipelago, and ranks behind Tokopedia, Sea Ltd's Shopee and Alibaba's Lazada in the e-commerce segment in terms of market share and gross merchandise value.

"Bukalapak's IPO shows that there is a large and vibrant market for homegrown Indonesian unicorns," said Antonio Puno, head of Southeast Asia corporate finance at Bank of America, the joint global coordinators for the issue with UBS.

Bukalapak increased its IPO size in multiple rounds and received roughly $6.5 billion of interest from institutional and retail investors. The retail part of the IPO was doubled to 5%.

Two sources familiar with the matter said the firm had priced its IPO at an enterprise value to sales multiple of 16 times based on next year's estimated sales.

"This IPO has also demonstrated that Southeast Asia technology companies can achieve a premium valuation for growth with significant demand," said Nicolo Magni, head of global banking for Southeast Asia and India at UBS.

"This creates a platform for other companies to have sizeable, highly successful offerings to list in Indonesia or other regional exchanges," he said. ($1 = 14,365.0000 rupiah)