Lion Air Group is conducting an "intensive study" into regulations that govern an IPO on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), group president Edward Sirait has told Bisnis Indonesia.

Sirait said the company was still reviewing the country's Law No.8 (1995) on the capital market, to determine its next steps.

"We are still studying this IPO and the rules of the law, but it is not yet time to talk because we said that we might cancel and that would violate the legal provisions. But when it's time, we will explain," he said on June 27.

The privately owned group, whose constituent units include Lion Air, Wings Air (Indonesia), Batik Air, Thai Lion Air, and Malindo Air, has considered a capital-generating IPO several times over the last five years, most recently in July 2018 when it was listed as an attendee at an Ernest & Young IPO masterclass seminar in Jakarta. But a volatile rupiah and weak national economy have scuppered each attempt.

Sirait stressed that the group was keen on some of its businesses being available to buy into on the stock exchange, suggesting that the subsidiary Batam Aero Technic (BAT), for example, was a feasible candidate.

According to another report by Bisnis Indonesia, Sirait said that BAT would continue to focus on developing the group's maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business with an investment of IDR10 trillion rupiah (USD710 million), developing more land in the Batam area, he said, due to its proximity to Singapore.

BAT constructed its first facilities on the island in 2013 and now has two hangars there capable of accommodating twelve narrowbody or four widebody aircraft. A third hangar, to handle up to six narrowbodies, will be completed within one year, Sirait said.

An IPO for one or more of Lion Air Group's subsidiaries was "just a matter of time," he concluded.