CATL starts taking investor orders for world's biggest listing this year
Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. (CATL) has started taking investor orders for a Hong Kong stock offering that is likely to be the world's biggest listing this year.
CATL, as the Chinese electric vehicle battery giant is known, is seeking to raise as much as HK$41 billion ($5.3 billion), according to its listing document on Monday. That's if the deal is upsized and the greenshoe exercised on top of the base offering of up to HK$31 billion.
The Fujian-based company is marketing shares at a maximum price of HK$263 each, or 1.4% lower than Friday's close in Shenzhen but roughly equivalent to Thursday's. Pricing could be decided as soon as Tuesday and the stock is expected to begin trading May 20.
The shares rose as much as 3.4% in Shenzhen trading, outperforming the benchmark index.
CATL is offering about 118 million shares in the base offering, which could increase to around 136 million if the company upsizes the deal by 15%. With the greenshoe option, the company would be selling nearly 156 million shares.
Cornerstone investors, which agree to hold shares from the deal for at least six months, have committed to buy about $2.6 billion worth of stock, according to the prospectus. They include Chinese state-owned oil company Sinopec, the Kuwait Investment Authority and alternative-asset manager Hillhouse Investment.
CATL said it was doing the deal in the form of a so-called Regulation S offering, which doesn't allow sales to U.S. onshore investors and exempts the issuer from certain U.S. regulatory filing obligations, confirming an earlier report. The limitations on certain types of U.S. investors indicates that U.S.-China tensions may be spilling into the new-listings landscape.
The company also received a waiver from the Hong Kong exchange on the need to carry out a clawback mechanism, which would have required it to allocate more shares to retail investors if demand were high enough, according to the prospectus. The waiver allows for institutional investors to maintain a larger proportion of shares allocated for the Hong Kong listing.
The share offering would more than double proceeds in Hong Kong's market for listings this year, which Bloomberg Intelligence predicts will surge to more than $22 billion. The bonanza's been driven by Chinese companies going ahead with their listing plans in the Asian financial hub despite the turmoil brought on by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs, which have caused many deals to be postponed in America and Europe.
The deal hasn't come without hurdles.
CATL was put on a Pentagon blacklist in January based on allegations of its links to the Chinese military — something the company has denied repeatedly.
The heat has spread to even some of the banks arranging the deal.
In April, a U.S. congressional committee publicly called on JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. to stop working on the listing because of CATL's alleged military links — again, denied by the company.
But both American banks stuck with the deal.
After the sale, CATL plans to use much of the proceeds for its ongoing international expansion in Europe, especially for a big factory in Hungary to supply top clients such as Mercedes-Benz. That may help the company widen its lead in the industry, where it has a a market share of roughly 38%, comfortably ahead of its closest challenger, top EV maker BYD's 17%, according to SNE Research.
As for Hong Kong, the deals keep on rolling. Chinese cancer drugmaker Jiangsu Hengrui Pharmaceuticals is also gearing up for a big listing this month, people familiar with the matter have said.
Besides JPMorgan and Bank of America, joint sponsors of CATL's offering include China International Capital Corp. and China Securities International. Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and UBS Group are also arranging the deal.
CATL said it would pay the underwriters a fixed fee of 0.2% of the deal, including shares to be issued if the offering gets upsized and the greenshoe option is exercised. The banks may also receive a 0.6% incentive fee.
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