IPO Watch: ASX listings highest in three years as April delivers gold, income and a Nevada play
Twelve ASX listings, a $950m gold LIC and a Nevada explorer leading the pack, but new floats are struggling to hold their debut gains.
Source: iStock
Mentioned
KEY POINTS
- ASX IPOs have averaged a 27.3% return on debut and finished positive 83% of the time, but the average listing is now up just 4.3% from offer and only half are still trading above their offer prices
- L1 Gold Fund's $950 million raise was one of the largest LIC listings of 2026, with founders Mark Landau and Raphael Lamm tipping in $140 million of their own capital
- Strip out Bison Resources, which rallied 225% on its debut, and the average day one return falls to just 9.3% and to-date returns flip negative to -4.3%
2026 has delivered a small handful of listings each month, and April was no exception, with the L1 Gold Fund, Solaris Australian Equity Income Plus and Bison Resources all making their market debut.
Twelve companies have listed so far this year, outpacing the same period in 2025 (5), 2024 (8) and 2023 (10), but still well short of the 39 recorded in 2022.
April listings at a glance
L1 Gold Fund (LGF): An L1 Capital-managed LIC offering exposure to an actively managed long/short portfolio of gold and precious metals equities, largely replicating L1's existing wholesale gold fund. The $950 million raise ranked among the largest LIC listings of 2026, with founders Mark Landau and Raphael Lamm committing $140 million of their own capital.
Solaris Australian Equity Income Plus (SET): A LIC from Pinnacle affiliate Solaris Investment Management, designed to deliver monthly fully franked dividends and long-term capital growth from a portfolio of ASX-listed equities.
Bison Resources (BSR): A junior gold and silver explorer with four projects in northeast Nevada's Carlin Trend, one of the world's most prolific gold belts. The company raised $5.5 million in an oversubscribed IPO to fund geophysics, sampling and maiden drilling across the portfolio.
IPOs so far this year
IPOs this year have averaged a 27.3% return on debut and traded positive 83% of the time. New listings have struggled to hold onto those initial gains, with the average IPO now up just 4.3% from the offer price and only half trading above the offer price.
Strip out Bison Resources and the debut average falls to 9.3% and to-date returns turn negative, to -4.3%.
Source: Market Index | To-date returns to 30 April 2026
A closer look: Bison Resources
Bison lodged its prospectus on 20 February and made its ASX debut on 16 April. During this time, gold prices fell ~6% from US$5,108 to US$4,790 – a rather downbeat backdrop for an explorer. Though a lean market cap of just $13.2 million offers high leverage to exploration newsflow, while the company also flagged the IPO as "heavily oversubscribed", which likely added to early demand.
As for the projects:
Four development projects (Ruby Lake, Cherry Springs, Bald Peaks, Medicine Range) consist of 312 unpatented mining claims in Nevada, USA
Projects located ~7km from Sun Silver's 539Moz AgEq Maverick Springs deposit, in the same host rocks and structural corridor
Nevada produces ~75% of all US gold output and is a Tier-1 jurisdiction with established permitting and infrastructure
Four projects targeting a range of mineralisation styles: porphyry, epithermal, carbonate replacement, skarn and Carlin-type
Projects exhibit key ingredients typically associated with large-scale precious metal systems, including major structural corridors, carbonate host sequences, multiple intrusive centres and numerous historic workings (Ag-Pb-Zn-Cu)
Bald Peaks Project includes a 1km-long anomaly identified as a walk-up drill target
Bison is also backed by key team members behind ASX-listed Nevada plays Sun Silver (SS1) and Black Bear Minerals (BKB), both of which posted strong returns post-IPO and to date.
More listings to come
The ASX website indicates three more listings in May:
Kaoko Metals: A Perth-based copper explorer with two fully permitted projects in Namibia. The flagship Chalkos Copper-Silver Project in the underexplored Kaoko Copper Belt and an 85% earn-in on the Karibib Copper-Gold-Tungsten Project.
KTEK Aerosystems: A defence company that makes parts and airframes for military drones, supplying manufacturers across the US, EU and Israel. Rather than running its own factories, it handles the engineering in-house and uses a network of certified partners to do the actual production.
Li-FT Power: A Vancouver-based lithium explorer, seeking a dual-listing on the ASX as part of its all-share acquisition of Winsome Resources, consolidating Quebec's tier-one Adina lithium project with the adjacent Galinée property.
IPOs have shown relatively strong debut returns, but the clear challenge is holding those gains against thin liquidity, a lack of fresh newsflow and broader market volatility.
