Canada’s top stock exchange has had one

initial public offering

this year. So far, it hasn’t gone well.

GO Residential Real Estate Investment Trust, an owner of luxury apartments in

New York City,

has seen its shares drop 15 per cent since it raised US$410 million in a

Toronto Stock Exchange

IPO in July. The decline started immediately, with the company falling on its debut even though the deal was oversubscribed by investors.

It’s been a rough start for what is just the second IPO on the TSX, excluding royalty corporations and blank-check vehicles, since 2022. That was the year when central banks across the world raised interest rates and, in turn, new listings slowed. While sectors like

artificial intelligence

and cryptocurrency have helped to revive the U.S. market this year, that hasn’t happened in Canada, where less splashy industries — financial services, energy and mining — reign supreme. But GO Residential isn’t alone: Of the handful of TSX IPOs in the last four years, some have slid or traded flat in their first month, even if the gains come later.

Despite the hit to its valuation, GO Residential President Matthew Keller told Bloomberg that the firm remains confident in its outlook.

“While we are disappointed in unit price performance to date, we are also cognizant of the fact that broader market volatility and sentiment tend to play an outsized role when it comes to new issues,” he said in an emailed statement.

John McKenzie, chief executive of TSX operator

TMX Group

, isn’t ready to panic either. He’s more focused on long-term performance.

“I’ve never been one that says we should actually judge the performance of an IPO based on how it trades shortly afterward,” McKenzie said in an interview. “Let’s talk about how it trades five years from now.”

One disadvantage for GO Residential may be where it chose to list. It currently trades at about a 47 per cent discount to CIBC Capital Markets’ estimate of its net asset value, versus a NAV discount of around 22 per cent for its U.S.-listed apartment peers, the bank’s research shows. Analyst Dean Wilkinson sees this as unwarranted, but not surprising.

“This mirrors previous Canadian-listed U.S. housing REITs, which ultimately attracted private equity interest and delivered outsized returns to investors,” he wrote in a note to clients this month. For example, Canadian InterRent Real Estate Investment Trust was taken private in May, and Summit Industrial Income REIT went into private hands in 2023.

Wilkinson sees a US$24 as fair value for GO Residential shares over the next 12 to 18 months, almost twice their current price. He’s not the only optimist: the three other analysts tracked by Bloomberg who cover the stock recommend buying it.

Slow burn

Josef Schuster, founder and chief executive of Ipox Schuster LLC, which tracks IPO performance in Canada and the U.S., said investors up north are often slower to warm up to new listings.

“Canadian IPOs may not give you the huge initial pop like you have experienced in the U.S., but the real upside may be in the medium- to longer-term,” he said.

Schuster points to a handful of Canadian IPOs that initially performed poorly — including Groupe Dynamite and MDA Space Ltd. — before rallying sharply. Indeed,

Groupe Dynamite Inc.

shares initially struggled when they started trading at the end of 2024, ending a dry spell of almost two years for IPOs on the TSX. In 2025, the stock has been on a tear, up over 80 per cent so far in U.S. dollar terms. Meanwhile, MDA Space and Definity Financial Corp. — a pair of 2021 debutants — are up almost 200 per cent since their first-time share sales.

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And despite its lackluster IPO scene, the

S&P/TSX Composite Index

has outperformed the S&P 500 Index this year, rising 14 per cent compared to a 10 per cent gain in the U.S. stock gauge.

Still, the Canadian market is far away from the U.S. in terms of getting investors excited about new listings. Of the ten largest U.S. debuts this year, only four stocks are trading below their IPO prices.

Bloomberg.com