Chunghwa Telecom sells 120 million shares

Chunghwa Telecom Co (中華電信), the nation's largest phone operator, auctioned off 120 million shares to domestic investors yesterday, raking in NT$6.12 billion (US$185.5 million) at a floor price of NT$51 per share.

The floor price is 5.03 percent lower than Chunghwa Telecom's closing price yesterday. The discount range was higher than the 4 percent predicted by market watchers.

Chunghwa Telecom declined NT$0.9, or 1.65 percent, to close at NT$53.7 on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, compared with a drop of 0.88 percent in the benchmark TAIEX yesterday.

The auction, held after the stock market closed, attracted 363,401 bidders, Deputy Minister of Finance Liu Teng-cheng (劉燈城) said yesterday. As the auction was oversubscribed, the ministry decided to limit each bidder to 1,000 shares, down from the original 2,000 shares, Liu said.

Chou Kang-chi (周康記), president of Capital Securities Corp (群益證券), the company which managed the auction, said he was surprised at the overwhelming interest from domestic investors. Capital Securities Corp had predicted that the sale would attract about 150,000 bidders.

The huge number of buyers also forced the Taiwan Stock Exchange to extend the deadline for the tender from 3:30pm to 5pm yesterday.

The 120 million shares sold yesterday accounted for 1.27 percent of Chunghwa Telecom's outstanding shares. After this domestic sale, Chunghwa will sell another 505.39 million shares, or about 5.8 percent of outstanding shares, in the form of American Depositary Receipts (ADRs) overseas today. The final ADR price will be announced at 4:30am.

The domestic and overseas share sales will reduce the government's holdings in Chunghwa Telecom from 41 percent to 34 percent.

This is the second time the government has sold its holdings in Chunghwa Telecom to ease public debt.

Chunghwa Telecom became a private company in August last year, after the government's holding in the firm was reduced from 65 percent to around 48 percent through the sale of 289.43 million shares to domestic investors and 135.1 million ADRs to overseas investors.

The floor price for the first share auction to domestic investors was NT$56.3 per share, 7.71 percent lower than the company's share price at the time. The ADRs were sold at US$18.98 per unit to overseas investors.

In related news, the Fair Trade Commission announced yesterday that it will fine Chunghwa Telecom NT$2.72 million for running advertisements that the commission feels misled consumers.

In ads that appeared on Chunghwa Telecom's subscription forms and telephone bills, the company claimed that electromagnetic emissions from third-generation mobile networks are lower than those of PHS and GSM networks, and thus less harmful.

But the commission said that there is no standard measurement for electromagnetic emissions from different networks.

Chunghwa Telecom should cease distributing the ads, the commission said in its statement.