[photopress:cosco_superpetrolero.jpg,full,alignright]China COSCO Holdings may have China’s largest share sale outside the finance sector this year as it seeks funds to expand Asia’s biggest container-shipping line. The China Securities Regulatory Commission Monday has approved China COSCO’s sale.
The company will sell as many as 1.78 billion shares, a 20% stake, in a Shanghai public offering.
China COSCO’s sale may raise as much as RMB16.8 billion ($2.2 billion.) The statement did not give a price range for the sale of Tianjin-based China COSCO or say how much the company plans to raise. Bloomberg News calculated the maximum amount collected by multiplying the number of shares on sale with the price of the company’s Hong Kong-traded shares, which closed Monday at RMB9.34 (HK$9.54.)
China COSCO plans to use RMB6 billion ($.78 billion) of the proceeds to help its container-shipping subsidiary pay for 12 new vessels.
Geoffrey Cheng, a Hong Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Institute of Research (HK), said, ‘Investors will probably be attracted to the company as there isn’t another comparable container-shipping line listed in China.’
China COSCO raised RMB9.32 billion ($1.24 billion) in an initial public offering in Hong Kong in June 2005. The shares, which rose 1.3% Monday, have more than doubled from their IPO price.
Source: The Standard