Capital-raising at the Philippine Stock Exchange ended 2021 at P234.48 billion, the highest level ever seen by the local bourse in its history.

For the year, the PSE had seen eight initial public offerings (IPOs), 11 follow-on offerings, four stock rights offerings and eight private placements.

"We are pleased that more companies chose to raise funds through the PSE. Their confidence in the stock market made it possible for us to achieve this record capital raising number," PSE president and CEO Ramon Monzon said in a press statement on Friday.

The eight new names that have debuted on the stock exchange are the following: AllDay Marts, MREIT Inc., RL Commercial REIT Inc., Filinvest REIT Corp., Monde Nissin Corp., DDMP REIT Inc., Medilines Distributors Inc. and Solar Philippines Nueva Ecija Corp.

The amount of capital raised in the stock market broke the previous high of P228.33 billion last seen in 2012.

This was despite a lackluster performance of the main-share Philippine Stock Exchange index (PSEi) for the year, which ended at 7,122.63 or almost unchanged from the end-2020 level of 7,139.71.

On the last trading day on Friday, the PSEi tumbled by 211.93 points or 2.9 percent due to jitters on the Omicron COVID-19 variant.

Foreign investors were net sellers to the tune of P2.32 billion in 2021. However, this had narrowed from the previous year's net outflow of P128.57 billion. 

Foreign investors accounted for 36.1 percent of the trading value turnover, while local counterparts accounted for the remaining bulk.

Daily average value turnover for the year stood at P9 billion, up by 22.5 percent from the previous year's average of P7.35 billion average.

A surge in retail investor participation was also logged in 2021 at 31.1 percent as a share of total turnover, from 18.2 percent in 2019 and 26.9 percent in 2020.