China Life Raises $3.62 Billion in Share Sale, People Say
By Bei Hu
Dec. 27 (Bloomberg) -- China Life Insurance Co. raised 28.3 billion yuan ($3.62 billion) in the first domestic public share sale by a Chinese insurance company, after pricing the stock at the top end of its range, two people with direct knowledge of the offering said.
China Life, the country's largest life insurer, priced 1.5 billion new yuan-denominated A shares at 18.88 yuan apiece, according to the people, who declined to be identified before an official statement scheduled for Dec. 28.
``There'll be quite a bit of an upside for the A share buyers,'' Dorris Chen Huanming, an analyst for BNP Paribas in Shanghai, said yesterday before the final pricing. ``China Life's A shares will, over the long run, trade at a premium to its H shares because of the scarcity of insurance stocks at home.''
Rising incomes and cuts in government welfare have boosted demand for insurance products in China. Life insurance premiums rose 11 percent to 379.8 billion yuan in the first 11 months from a year earlier, according to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission.
China Life had set a price range for the stock, 5.3 percent of its share capital, at between 18.16 yuan and 18.88 yuan. The final price for the A share offering came at a 22.9 percent discount to the record HK$24.35 closing price of China Life's Hong Kong-quoted H shares on Dec. 22, the last trading day before the Christmas break in the city.
China Galaxy Securities Co. and China International Capital Corp. arranged China Life's A share sale.
Final Pricing
Xu Xu, an official in the president's office of China Galaxy, Tracy Hu, a Beijing-based spokeswoman at CICC, and Cao Qingyang, a spokesman at China Life's headquarters in Beijing, declined to comment.
The final price of the A shares, available to domestic investors and selected foreign asset managers licensed to trade Shanghai- and Shenzhen-quoted stocks, may induce China Life's H shares to fall when trading resumes today, Chen said.
Investors drove China Life's H shares up 18 percent between Dec. 15, when the China Securities Regulatory Commission approved its domestic share sale, and Dec. 22.
Since the company sold shares at HK$3.625 before listing in Hong Kong and on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2003, its H share price has surged more than sixfold.
China Life is now the world's largest publicly traded life insurer by market value, surpassing international companies such as Manulife Financial Corp., Aviva Plc and Prudential Financial Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg. It pulled ahead of AXA SA as the fourth-largest among all publicly held insurers by market value, behind American International Group Inc, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Allianz SE.
January Debut
Trading above seven times its book value at the end of June, China Life is the world's sixth-most-expensive publicly quoted life insurance company, Bloomberg data shows.
China Life's A shares begin trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange no later than Jan. 11, and most probably on Jan. 9, people involved said earlier.
``The A share IPO investors will for sure make money because of the higher H share price,'' Dai Jie, an analyst at ABN Amro TEDA Fund Management Co. in Beijing, a venture of Dutch ABN Amro Holding that manages about $2.3 billion of assets in China, said yesterday.
Investors bid as much as 26.8 yuan for shares when China Life tested investor appetite for the A shares.
``Some large institutional investors in China expect its A shares to surge past 30 yuan on the first day,'' Chen said. ``In addition to the scarcity effect, domestic fund managers usually take a cue from their international peers in terms of stock selection and China Life has been a darling of international fund managers.''
Domestic Offerings
A surge in China Life on its debut could power a rally of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index, which will begin to track the stock's performance from the first day of trading.
China companies have answered the government's call to go public domestically, raising $19.7 billion selling shares on the home stock market this year.
Early share sales by Bank of China Ltd. and Industrial & Commercial Bank of China contributed to the more than doubling of the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index this year.
To contact the reporter on this story: Bei Hu in Hong Kong at bhu5@bloomberg.net . |