Are There Any State-Owned Companies Will IPO In The Near Future? This Is A Leak From Erick Thohir

Minister of SOEs, Erick Thohir. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The arrival of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) to the capital market to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) has always been something that investors have been waiting for. Then, are there any state-owned companies that will have an IPO in the near future?

Minister of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) Erick Thohir said several companies and SOE subsidiaries will conduct initial public offerings in the next few years. He said, encouraging BUMN or BUMN subsidiaries to go public is part of increasing transparency.

At least, certain strategic sectors will become public companies. These companies range from the telecommunications, logistics to energy sectors.

"I can't be specific whether it's 2021, 2022, or 2023 because protection from insider trading is not allowed, especially as a minister," he said in a virtual dialogue in Jakarta, Friday, July 30.

However, Erick gave some leaks of companies that will conduct an initial public offering. Starting from a subsidiary of PT Telkom Indonesia Tbk (TLKM) which is engaged in data center and telecommunications tower providers, it is being prepared to go public.

"Telkom's valuation is still good, but I think it should be better. Especially with the improvement of the existing business model at Telkom, that Telkom should not be confined to just communication. Why? The voice data is lost, there is no income. Because of that We also encourage Telkom companies, their subsidiaries such as Data Center, Mitratel, whose towers can go public in the future," he said.

Then, said Erick, the subholding of PT Pertamina (Persero) which is a subsidiary grouped by type of business is also a consideration for an IPO. One of them is engaged in marine logistics or sea transportation.

"For example, we integrate instead of marine logistics transportation, not only ships, ports, energy storage into a group. Now, we can also go public in the future," he said.

Erick said that Pertamina Geothermal Energy's IPO plan could not be separated from the efforts of the SOE Ministry which is forming a Geothermal SOE holding (Geothermal). In fact, the establishment of this geothermal holding also received a positive response from the Ministry of Finance.

Later this holding will be filled with three state-owned companies that have been working on the development and operation of Geothermal Power Plants (PLTP), such as PT Pertamina Geothermal Energy (PGE), PT Geo Dipa Energi (Persero), and PT PLN Geothermal.

"Yesterday, how we merged PLN, Pertamina, for geothermal was welcomed by the Minister of Finance because the Ministry of Finance also has Geo Dipa assets that can join this group," he said.

Erick said holding geothermal is an adaptive step in dealing with changes in which fossil energy is starting to be abandoned. Moreover, he said, geothermal potential can also open up large job opportunities for the community.

"Sometimes we are trapped as if doing this corporate action we want to release the burden from SOEs, no, SOEs remain as the locomotive of development so that the public service also uses geothermal energy to become new and renewable energy. ahead of the so-called pollution and others," he said.