139 IPOs Tracked to Listing Day: What Listing Day Actually Paid
By IPO Cracker Editorial Team · 03 Aug 2026
Listing gains get reported as headlines. The 40% pop makes the news; the flat open does not. We tracked 139 IPOs from issue price through to actual listing price, so here is the distribution rather than the highlights.
The overall picture
Average listing gain across all 139 was 7.56%. Just 76 of 139 listed above their issue price, which is 54.7%.
Those two numbers together are the story. A healthy average sits alongside odds barely better than a coin flip, which means the average is carried by a minority of strong listings while the typical outcome is far more ordinary.
Mainboard against SME
| Segment | IPOs | Average listing gain | Profitable on listing day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mainboard | 40 | +5.68% | 55.0% |
| SME | 99 | +8.32% | 54.5% |
SME issues averaged a higher listing gain, which is the number usually quoted in their favour. But they were no more likely to make money at all than Mainboard issues, at 54.5% against 55.0%.
That combination is the definition of higher variance. SME listings pay more when they work and the failures are correspondingly worse. The higher average is compensation for risk, not evidence of a better trade.
What actually separated winners from losers
Subscription did, and clearly. Grouping the same listings by final subscription:
- Under 5x subscribed: profitable only 27.5% of the time, averaging a 3.91% loss
- Over 100x subscribed: profitable 96.3% of the time, averaging a 39.78% gain
Grey market premium was a much weaker guide. It called the direction correctly 58.9% of the time overall and only 52.3% on SME issues.
Reading these numbers honestly
Listing day is one day. A stock that opens 40% up can give it all back within a month, and these figures say nothing about where any of them traded afterwards.
The dataset also covers a period broadly supportive of new issues. In a weaker market the profitable share would very likely fall below half.
And there is a survivorship effect worth naming: issues withdrawn for lack of demand never reach a listing table at all, so any listing-gains dataset flatters the asset class slightly.
What we take from it
- Roughly half of IPOs do not gain on listing day. Anyone describing IPO applications as low-risk is not looking at the distribution.
- SME is a higher-variance version of the same bet, not a better one.
- Subscription is the single most useful pre-listing signal we have measured.
- Sizing matters more than selection. With a coin-flip base rate, position size decides outcomes more than picking well does.
Recomputed from our live database as IPOs list. Full listing-by-listing detail: listing performance tracker.