Want Want China Holdings Ltd (
Shanghai-based Want Want and its owners are offering 2.7 billion shares at HK$3 each, the lowest of a HK$3 to HK$4.10 price range, a copy of an e-mailed term sheet sent to investors showed.
The company, which withdrew from the Singapore stock exchange last year, is moving its listing to Hong Kong, where Chinese companies command higher valuations. Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index has lost 12.3 percent this month and hit a seven-month low yesterday after the US Federal Reserve cut its discount interest rate at an emergency meeting and JPMorgan Chase & Co agreed to buy Bear Stearns Cos.
"In the current climate I would be surprised if they don't lower it further or scrap it totally," Andrew Clarke, a sales trader at SG Securities Hong Kong Ltd, said in an interview yesterday. "It's no surprise"
Want Want set the price at the bottom of its marketed range.
Its owners are offering 2.32 billion shares while the company will sell an additional 397 million new shares, the term sheet sent by e-mail to investors by one of the sale's arrangers, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg News, showed.
The shares being sold represent 20.5 percent of the company's capital after being enlarged by the sale, the term sheet said. The initial public offering may be boosted 15 percent, or 407.7 million shares, to meet demand, it said.
Selling the shares at HK$3 each would value Want Want at US$5.1 billion, or 20.3 times this year's estimated profit, a sale document said earlier this month. The stock's ratio was in the low to mid teens in Singapore a year ago, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
Want Want's share sale comes after more than 60 companies canceled or delayed IPOs worldwide this year, data compiled by Bloomberg showed, as concerns about a global economic recession dent demand for new stocks.
Maoye International Holdings Ltd (茂業國際控股公司) in January scrapped what could have been the largest Hong Kong IPO of a Chinese department store chain, as signs of rising Chinese consumer demand failed to shield it from weakening investor sentiment.
Want Want's profit grew 45 percent to US$124.2 million in the nine months ended September, while sales rose 27 percent to HK$765.5 million (US$99 million).
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
RSS