The Hong Kong Stock Exchange building on July 11 Photo: VCG

Hong Kong will retain its attraction to companies that seek listings in 2020 despite the social turbulence that went through last year, thanks to the maturity of its capital market and better familiarity of companies in the Chinese mainland, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) partners said on Thursday.  

Benson Wong, entrepreneur group leader at PwC Hong Kong, told the Global Times that there will be about 180 IPOs on the Hong Kong stock market in 2020, roughly the same number as 2019. 

According to Wong, there are about 160 companies that have applied to get listed on the Hong Kong market. He also predicted that this year will see an increase of overseas companies being listed in Hong Kong. There will be around 30 such IPOs in the city this year, compared with about 20 per year for the past two years, he said.

Statistics provided by PwC on Thursday showed that the Hong Kong was the top market in the world in terms of funds raised via new listings in 2019. 

The city saw IPOs of 283.4 billion yuan ($40.7 billion) in 2019, higher than Nasdaq's 225.8 billion yuan and 168.9 billion yuan on the New York Stock Exchange. In comparison, the Shanghai stock market saw 188.6 billion yuan of IPOs and Shenzhen saw 64.7 billion yuan of IPOs.

The IPO scale, to some extent, reflects the appeal and strength of the Hong Kong capital market despite temporary slumps of stock prices amid social unrest. 

"Despite social instability, we've observed that the market is still confident about Hong Kong as a mature capital market. Many of our clients also give Hong Kong a lot of consideration when they choose where to go public," Theodore Deng, PwC China assurance partner, told the Global Times on Thursday. 

The partners also noted that the trend will continue into 2020 for mainland-based, overseas-listed companies to seek listings in Hong Kong. 

Mainland e-commerce giant Alibaba made headlines when it went public on the Hong Kong bourse in November 2019, raising $12.93 billion in its share offering. 

Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing is discussing secondary listings with Chinese technology companies including Trip.com Group and Netease Inc. 

"The Hong Kong stock market often offers a higher valuation for mainland companies compared with overseas markets due to the fact that it is more familiar with mainland firms and understands their values better," said Eddie Wong, partner of capital markets services at PwC Hong Kong. 

But the partners forecast that funds raised in new listings in Hong Kong will decline this year, due to a lack of mega IPOs like the ones carried out by Alibaba and Budweiser Brewing Co in 2019. 

Wong forecast that Hong Kong will see IPOs of about HK$230 billion ($29.5 billion) to HK$260 billion in 2020.