Chinese pork giant WH Group Ltd (萬洲國際), which scrapped an initial public offering (IPO) worth more than US$5 billion earlier this year, has relaunched its plan to list in Hong Kong.
The world’s biggest pork firm, which last year bought US giant Smithfield Foods in a landmark multibillion-dollar deal, canceled a planned listing in April blaming “deteriorating” market conditions.
However, analysts attributed the move to a lack of appetite for the firm.
WH Group now plans to raise more than US$2 billion in its IPO, sources familiar with the company told reporters yesterday.
They added that the company plans to start taking orders in two weeks.
A prospectus filed to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday did not specify how much it would raise for the listing.
The company said in the prospectus that its net profit for the first quarter of this year was US$407 million, up from US$125 million for the same quarter a year earlier.
The decision to pull its IPO in April was a blow to Hong Kong’s stock exchange, which has been struggling to regain its appeal as a public listings destination after being eclipsed by other bourses in 2012 as the world’s largest venue for new listings.
WH Group, which is based in Henan Province, is involved in the production, slaughter and distribution of pork, a key ingredient in Chinese cuisine.
It is also a shareholder of Spanish meat firm Campofrio Food.
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],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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