Reuters reported that Chinese coal miner Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal Co Ltd has priced its Hong Kong share offer at the bottom of an indicative range, putting it on course to raise about HKD 7 billion (USD 903 million).

IFR citing two sources familiar with the matter said that Yitai Coal, which already has B shares traded in Shanghai, priced the offer at HKD 43.00 each, compared with the marketing range of HKD 43-53 per share.

That would rank it as the second-largest equity capital markets deal in Hong Kong this year after Chinese stock brokerage Haitong Securities' USD 1.85 billion stock offer in April.

Yitai Coal's pricing comes after several high-profile Asian fund raisings were put on hold due to choppy markets. Among the offers that were pulled or delayed were the USD 1 billion Hong Kong IPO by London jeweler Graff Diamonds and a USD 3 billion Singapore listing from motor-racing business Formula One.

The volatility has caused equity capital market deals in Asia ex Japan to drop 30.4% to USD 77.9 billion in the first half of the year, with IPO volumes alone tumbling 62%

The report added that Yitai Coal is selling 162.8 million new shares and the offer price represents price-to-earnings multiple of 6.7 for 2012.

Yitai Coal is set to start trading on July 12 and will become the first B-share company to trade in Hong Kong. B-shares, a class of stock traded in mainland China denominated in either U.S. dollars or Hong Kong dollars, were first introduced in 1992 as a way to lure foreign investors to the domestic Chinese equities market.

BOC International and China International Capital Corp (CICC) acted as sponsors and joint bookrunners with BNP Paribas , Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Macquarie and UBS.

Source - Reuters

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