Midea's strong Hong Kong debut after $4 billion listing boosts outlook

By Scott Murdoch and Donny Kwok

SYDNEY (Reuters) -Midea Group rose as much as 9.5% on its Hong Kong trading debut after the Chinese home appliances maker raised nearly $4 billion in the city's largest share offering in almost four years, boosting hopes for a revival in large Chinese issuances.

The stock ended up 7.8% at HK$59.10 on Tuesday, compared to a 1.4% rise for the main Hong Kong market index.

Midea, also listed in Shenzhen, last week priced shares at HK$54.80 each in its Hong Kong float, the top end of an indicative range on strong investor demand. Mainland Chinese markets were closed on Tuesday for mid-autumn festival holidays.

Midea's public offering of shares is the largest in Asia this year and second biggest globally behind Lineage Inc's New York IPO in July which raised $5.1 billion, LSEG data showed.

Trade tensions between the United States and China and high interest rates globally dampened foreign investors' appetite to buy into Hong Kong and Chinese equity capital markets deals in recent years.

China's economic slowdown and a property sector debt crisis also made both issuers and investors wary about equity offerings and company valuations. Beijing has also tightened scrutiny of offshore capital raisings by domestic companies since 2021.

However, bankers are hopeful a positive performance by Midea in its debut could prompt an increase in the number of potential IPO candidates.

"The strong performance by Midea will probably lead to a few more companies trying their luck with mainland to Hong Kong listings and overall IPOs as well, in our view," said Sumeet Singh, a director at Aequitas Research.

Hong Kong Stock Exchange CEO Bonnie Chan said Midea's listing highlighted the Chinese securities regulator's pledge earlier this year to support the Hong Kong market and to facilitate more IPOs from leading mainland companies.

"I believe today's listing is a great prelude for more mega deals to come," Chan said in a LinkedIn post.

HOPES FOR MORE LISTINGS

Midea rose as high as HK$60 per share, 9.5% above the offer price, with 65.1 million shares worth HK$3.84 billion changing hands. It was the second most actively traded stock by turnover on the Hong Kong market on Tuesday, exchange data showed.

The company sold 565.9 million shares in the deal and the final price set was about a 20% discount to Midea's Shenzhen listed share price. Mainland Chinese shares typically trade at a premium to Hong Kong-listed stocks.

The company's institutional tranche was oversubscribed by eight times and the Hong Kong retail offering portion was 5.31 times covered, Midea's regulatory filings showed.

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 if not thousands of times covered.

Midea increased the number of shares on sale after receiving strong demand from investors during the bookbuilding process.

Given the strong response, "investment bankers will be trying to get more quality names to list in Hong Kong," said Devi Subhakesan, an analyst at research firm Investory who publishes on investment research platform Smartkarma.

The latest deal take the volume of IPOs and listings in Hong Kong, one of the major listing venues globally, so far in 2024 to $6.5 billion, Dealogic data showed, up from $2.7 billion at the same time last year.

When Hong Kong's markets were at a record high in 2021, there had been $35.7 billion in deals by the same point in the year, the data showed.

Midea's debut adds to the strong momentum in Asia this month -- shares in India's Bajaj Housing Finance more than doubled on their debut on Monday, making it the fourth-best major listing in a red-hot Indian IPO market this year.

(Reporting by Scott Murdoch in Sydney and Donny Kwok in Hong Kong; editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Sonali Paul, Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Keith Weir)