A spate of IPO review terminations has occurred intensively recently.

Following the peak of IPO withdrawals and rejections in the third quarter which hit the highest level of the year, this trend has continued to the present, and IPO withdrawals and rejections within the year are stepping into a "concentrated period".

Wind data shows that 73 IPOs have been withdrawn and rejected since the beginning of this year. By month, 14 IPOs were withdrawn and rejected in July, hitting the single-month peak of the year; by quarter, driven by the surge in July, a total of 34 IPOs were withdrawn and rejected in the third quarter, reaching the quarterly peak of the year.

Entering the fourth quarter, this trend has not slowed down. Two sets of data may confirm the recent concentrated situation of IPO withdrawals and rejections:

First, in the first three quarters of 2026, 11, 23 and 34 IPOs respectively terminated their review, rising quarter by quarter; superimposed on the fact that there are still successive withdrawal and rejection cases during the National Day holiday in October, the subsequent IPO withdrawals and rejections may remain in a concentrated state.

Second, the same period in 2025 showed the opposite trend: in the first three quarters of last year, 52, 23 and 20 IPOs respectively terminated their review, declining quarter by quarter; and there were no IPO withdrawals and rejections in October of the same period last year. In comparison, it is obvious that recent IPO withdrawals and rejections are more concentrated.

With the concentrated volume of IPO withdrawals and rejections, why are they happening intensively recently?

Most of the highly concerned individual withdrawal and rejection cases within the year were terminated in the recent period.

On September 21, the STAR Market IPO of Huandong Technology was terminated, becoming the first robotics enterprise whose IPO application was withdrawn and rejected within the year. The company is mainly engaged in robot joint reducers, sponsored by GF Securities. Its IPO withdrawal and rejection has also made the listing prospect of the robotics track receive more attention.

Later, the STAR Market IPO of Huihe Medical was terminated on September 24. The enterprise was only accepted on June 30 this year, jointly sponsored by Soochow Securities and Guotai Haitong Securities. It only took 86 days from acceptance to withdrawal, which is a typical case of "lightning-fast" IPO withdrawal and rejection within the year. It is worth mentioning that Huihe Medical is not only the first enterprise in the STAR Market biomedical sector to terminate its review this year, but also the first IPO to terminate its review after being selected for on-site inspection this year.

On October 5, the ChiNext IPO of Bohua Technology and its sponsor CITIC Securities had their review terminated due to active order withdrawal. The company has been under review for more than 4 years, becoming the enterprise with the longest queuing time for IPO material withdrawal since the implementation of the registration-based system.

On October 8, the STAR Market IPO of Saikesaisi was terminated, sponsored by Everbright Securities. This termination marks the third failure of the company's IPO attempts in 6 years.

On October 9, the IPO of Qichacha, which has attracted much market attention, was also terminated. This star enterprise in the credit reporting big data field is sponsored by CITIC Securities, and withdrew its application just one year after being under review.

Why are IPO withdrawals and rejections happening intensively recently? From the common characteristics of the withdrawn and rejected projects, there may be three factors: first, the number of declared applications is relatively large, and the absolute number of withdrawals and rejections in active acceptance sectors such as the Beijing Stock Exchange ranks at the top; second, the on-site inspection is promoted on a regular basis, and the projects selected for inspection within the year are cleared out one after another, with Huihe Medical as a typical example; third, approaching the year-end financial statement update window, some enterprises under review are under performance pressure or do not sufficiently match the sector positioning, so they choose to withdraw their applications in advance. At the same time, the clearance of "old projects" that have been queuing for more than three years such as Bohua Xinzhi and Tongmei Crystal has also pushed up the number of recent withdrawals and rejections.

73 IPOs have been withdrawn and rejected this year, and Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces account for nearly half of the total

Wind data shows that 73 IPOs have been withdrawn and rejected since 2026, down 24.74% compared with 97 withdrawn and rejected IPOs in the same period last year.

From the perspective of distribution of proposed listing sectors, the withdrawn and rejected projects are highly concentrated on the Beijing Stock Exchange. Among the 73 IPOs, 41 IPOs on the Beijing Stock Exchange have been withdrawn and rejected, accounting for more than half; followed by 18 on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (6 on the main board, 12 on the STAR Market) and 14 on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange (5 on the Shenzhen main board, 9 on the ChiNext).

It is worth noting that the proposed fundraising scale of withdrawn and rejected projects also shows obvious gradient differences with the sector distribution. The total proposed fundraising of the 73 withdrawn and rejected IPOs is about 56.3 billion yuan. By sector, the average proposed fundraising of withdrawn and rejected projects on the Shanghai main board is as high as 1.881 billion yuan, that of the STAR Market is 1.456 billion yuan, while the average proposed fundraising of withdrawn and rejected projects on the Beijing Stock Exchange is only 361 million yuan, less than 20% of that of the Shanghai main board projects, with a remarkable "small-scale" feature.

At the same time, the IPO withdrawal and rejection situation within the year also reflects three major characteristics:

First, the three major industries of materials, industry and information technology account for nearly 80%. From the perspective of industry distribution, the withdrawn and rejected projects are further concentrated in a few industries. According to Wind's primary industry classification, materials, industry and information technology have become the hardest-hit areas of IPO withdrawals and rejections, with 20, 19 and 19 IPOs withdrawn and rejected respectively, totaling 58 cases.

Second, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Guangdong provinces account for nearly half of the withdrawn and rejected projects. In terms of regional dimension, the concentration of withdrawn and rejected projects is also obvious. Jiangsu Province ranks first in the country with 14 withdrawn and rejected IPOs, Zhejiang Province and Guangdong Province each have 10, and the three provinces total 34 cases, accounting for 46.58%. If adding Beijing (7 cases) and Anhui (7 cases), the top five provinces total 48 cases, accounting for more than 60%.

From the perspective of cities, regions with active IPO declaration such as Beijing, Shanghai and Suzhou have correspondingly become high-incidence areas of IPO withdrawals and rejections. It is not difficult to see that the high concentration of withdrawn and rejected projects is highly correlated with the local IPO declaration base — the more active the declaration is, the larger the absolute number of withdrawals and rejections will be.

Third, the third quarter accounts for nearly half of the total withdrawals and rejections, and nearly 50% of the projects have been under review for less than one year. Observed from the time dimension, the pace of withdrawals and rejections this year shows a trend of "low at first and high later". Among all months, the number of IPO withdrawals and rejections rose to 14 in July, hitting the single-month peak of the year. The total number of withdrawals and rejections in the whole third quarter is 34, accounting for 46.58% of the total number within the year.

In the review market, the withdrawn and rejected projects show a polarization trend. Among the 73 withdrawn and rejected IPOs, as many as 46 are projects accepted in 2025, which is directly related to the recovery of IPO acceptance and the expansion of the declaration base since 2025. Among them, 35 projects withdrew less than one year after being under review; on the other hand, there are still 7 projects that have been queuing for more than 1000 days cleared out. Tongmei Crystal has been under review for as long as 1634 days, and Bohua Xinzhi, Tongli Technology, Yangguang Coking and other projects have also been under review for more than 1200 days.

This article is from the WeChat official account "CLS.cn", author: ZHAO Xinrui, published with authorization from 36Kr.