Australia’s Back Door to Going Public

A three-year-old company called 1-Page took an unusual path to the public markets. The San Francisco Web-based service, which helps human resources managers find job candidates, chose to list its stock on Australia’s main stock exchange, ASX, instead of on Nasdaq. And rather than go through an initial public offering, the company did a “reverse takeover”—buying a troubled nickel mining company that was already trading on the exchange. While the idea seemed “crazy” at first, says Joanna Weidenmiller, 1-Page’s chief executive officer, it’s worked out. “The large institutions are looking at us,” she says. The stock has jumped about 430 percent since the October 2014 deal.

With Australia’s economy slowing, the country is encouraging local and foreign companies to consider entering the equity market by acquiring a publicly traded company. There were 30 such “backdoor listings” in Australia last year, up from 19 the year before. The ASX has talked “with a lot of companies in the U.S.,” says Max Cunningham, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who runs the exchange’s listings business. Weidenmiller says she gets calls every day from CEOs of U.S. tech companies asking about Australia.