The top 10 best performing IPOs of the past 2 years

More than 90 companies have listed on the ASX in the past two years – Here's the top 10 performing stocks so far

Mike King

Mike King is a Fool.com.au Investment Analyst and Writer. He caught the investing bug more than a decade ago, at a time when the U.S. had invaded Iraq and fear reigned in the markets. His initial success as the markets took off encouraged his passion and thirst for knowledge. With 13 years behind him at one of Australia's largest domestic banks, Mike's passion for stocks led him to join a boutique funds management firm, where he stayed for four years. A seven-year stint in equity research at one of the largest investment banks in the world followed that, giving Mike a thirst to pursue his passion further. Mike holds a Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment and a Graduate Certificate in Financial Planning. His passion is to help retail investors invest better, and that passion was one of his primary reasons for joining The Motley Fool Australia in late 2011. Mike has written thousands of articles since joining, including for Fairfax Media, Yahoo!7, Ninemsn and has also appeared on ABC's The Business. You can see all of Mikes' holdings here

Published October 29, 2014 1:05 pm AEDT

More than 90 companies have listed on the ASX since January 2013. No wonder it's been hard trying to keep track of them all!

You probably won't be surprised to learn that performance has been mixed, with 54 stocks recording current higher share prices, with 36 showing lower prices than their first day's closing price (I've excluded resources companies and those with market caps less than $20m).

A number of companies have seen their share prices double, including Indoor Skydive Australia Group Ltd (ASX: IDZ), which is up 175% and IT company Rhype Ltd (ASX: RHP) up 100%. Following them are lawyers Shine Corporate Ltd (ASX: SHJ) with a gain of 81%, and then three property trusts, Asia Pacific Data Centre Group (ASX: AJD) rising 76%, National Storage REIT (ASX: NSR) up 40% and Arena REIT (ASX: ARF) up 36%.

Packaging group Orora Ltd (ASX: ORA) and hotels company Mantra Group Ltd (ASX: MTR) are both up around 34%. Another property trust, Rural Funds Group (ASX: RFF) and Virtus Health Ltd (ASX: VRT) with gains of 33% and 30% respectively, make up our top 10 best performing IPOs of the past two years.

Company	Gain since first day's closing price
Indoor Skydive Australia Group Ltd	175%
Rhype Ltd	100%
Shine Corporate Ltd	81.5%
Asia Pacific Data Centre Group	75.6%
National Storage REIT	40.5%
Arena REIT	35.7%
Orora Ltd	34.4%
Mantra Group Ltd	33.7%
Rural Funds Group	33.3%
Virtus Health Ltd	29.5%

Source: CapitalIQ

Of course, had you managed to get hold of shares in the IPO rather than buying on market in the first day, you could have seen even better returns.

So what do the results tell us?

One lesson stands out.

Dividend yields are obviously a key driver of the performance of many of the stocks, given the large representation by real estate investment trusts (A-REITs). Trusts generally pay higher, stable yields and it's clear that investors love their dividends.

That's likely to continue and investors may want to keep an eye on upcoming IPOs paying decent (fully franked or unfranked) dividends.

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