06:47 AM EST, 02/05/2025 (MT Newswires) -- The head of Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) owner TMX Group Ltd. ( TMXXF ) says that conditions are favourable for companies looking to raise public money in Canada, despite low business confidence and economic uncertainty.

"The underlying conditions for companies to raise money right now are excellent, they're the best they've been in years," John McKenzie, TMX Group's ( TMXXF ) CEO, told BNN Bloomberg in a Tuesday interview.

"We've got strong valuations in the market... that market's up 20 per cent year over year, you've got a lot of capital to deploy, valuations are good, interest rates are coming down, so the conditions to raise capital are excellent, but the confidence is the gap."

McKenzie said that increasing the number of "good transactions" in the form of initial public offerings (IPOs) on the TSX will help close that confidence gap, pointing to the exchange's only corporate IPO last year, Groupe Dynamite Inc. ( GRGDF ) , as a positive sign.

"Other people can look at that and say, okay that's something I can build on," he said, noting that despite how quiet the Canadian IPO market has been in recent years, TMX is working with dozens of companies that are considering going public in the future.

"On the inside, we keep working on a pipeline of issuers that are private today that could raise public money. We've got 1,600-plus that we're talking to, it's just a question of when for them, so you need to have some positive indicators."

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