China Rongsheng Heavy Industries (中國熔盛重工), China’s second--biggest shipbuilder, said domestic economic growth and government support will boost profit.
“The future of shipbuilding is upbeat as the global economy is recovering stably,” chief executive officer Chen Qiang (陳強) said in Hong Kong yesterday via a video conference. “The overall development of China’s economy has brought the industry a lot of opportunities.”
Rongsheng is seeking to raise as much as US$2.3 billion selling 1.75 billion shares at HK$7.30 to HK$10.10 in an initial public offering (IPO) this year. The shipbuilder intends to use the proceeds for projects including a fourth drydock, as a rebound in world trade following last year’s global recession revives demand for ships.
“There are strong investor -interests,” said David Suen, a Hong Kong-based managing director at JPMorgan Chase and Co’s equity capital markets. “The shipping industry is rebounding. New orders and delayed orders are resuming.”
The bank is one of the arrangers for the sale.
Best Investment Corp, China National Offshore Oil Corp (中國海洋石油), China Life Insurance (Group) Co (中國人壽), China Southern Fund Management Co (南方基金管理有限公司), Atlantis Investment Management Ltd (西京投資管理), Bondic International Holdings Ltd and Chow Tai Fok Nominee Ltd have agreed to buy a combined US$285 million of Rongsheng shares, according to the prospectus.
The stock will start trading on Nov. 19, it said in a statement.
Global ship deliveries in the past quarter may bring overcapacity which, combined with signs economic recovery in the US and Europe might weaken, could damp cargo volumes and rates this -quarter, analysts said.
Rongsheng is “confident” of raising profit levels and margins by boosting production capacity and implementing technology improvements and cost controls, chief financial officer Sean Wang said at the same conference.
The company forecasts net profit of at least 1.61 billion yuan (US$242 million) this year, and will receive a total of 830 million yuan in subsidies, according to its prospectus.
Rongsheng expects higher sales in China to boost yuan--denominated revenue, which now accounts for 11 percent of total earnings, Wang said. The company is in talks with banks on currency hedging, he said.
Orders as of Sept. 30 included 84 vessels of a combined 15.1 million deadweight tonnes, a press release said. Its orders for so-called very large ore carriers of more than 300,000 deadweight tonnes accounted for about a quarter of global orders.
Rongsheng said it plans to use a quarter of the IPO funds for shipbuilding and offshore engineering and another quarter to repay about HK$2.9 billion (US$374 million) of borrowings.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained