By Scott Murdoch and Donny Kwok
SYDNEY (Reuters) -Chinese home appliances maker Midea Group rose by up to 9.5% on its trading debut in Hong Kong on Tuesday after raising nearly $4 billion in the city’s largest share offering in almost four years, bolstering hopes for a revival in large Chinese issuances.
Midea, also listed in Shenzhen, priced its shares at HK$54.80 each in its Hong Kong float.
It rose as high as HK$60 per share, 9.5% above the offer price, with 34.6 million shares worth HK$2.04 billion changing hands. Midea is the most actively traded stock by turnover on the Hong Kong market so far on Tuesday, exchange data showed.
Midea sold 565.9 million shares in the deal which bankers are hoping could revive Hong Kong’s faltering capital markets where share sales have dived to the lowest point in more than a decade.
The final price set was about a 20% discount to Midea’s Shenzhen listed share price. Mainland Chinese shares typically trade at a premium compared to Hong Kong listed stocks.
Midea increased the number of shares on sale at the end of the transaction after receiving strong demand from investors during the bookbuilding process.
The institutional tranche was oversubscribed by 8 times and the Hong Kong retail offering portion was 5.31 times covered, according to Midea’s regulatory filings.
The oversubscription rates, while higher than recent Hong Kong deals, remain well below the city’s capital markets’ boom in 2021 when transactions were hundreds of times covered.
Trade tensions between the U.S. and China and high interest rates globally have dampened foreign investors appetite to buy into greater China equity capital markets deals, according to bankers and advisers.
Midea’s deal means there have been $6.5 billion worth of initial public offerings and listings in Hong Kong so far in 2024, according to Dealogic data, compared to $2.7 billion at the same time last year.
At the same time in 2021, when Hong Kong’s markets were at a record high, there had been $35.7 billion, the data showed.
(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Donny Kwok in Hong Kong; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman and Sonali Paul)
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