China Mobile Gets Approval for Shanghai Listing, Largest Fundraising in A-Shares Market in Decade
China Mobile Ltd., the country’s largest wireless carrier by revenue, has received approval from regulators to undergo a public listing in Shanghai after being removed from the New York Stock Exchange. The company updated its prospectus late on Monday night, showing plans to issue no more than 845.7 million A-shares.
China Mobile expects that this year’s revenue will be between 844.877 and 852.558 billion yuan ($132.8 to 134 billion), a year-on-year increase of about 10%-11%. The net profit attributed to the parent company owner’s was about 114.307-116.464 billion yuan, up around 6%-8% year-on-year.
According to unaudited financial data released by China Mobile on October 20, its operating income in the first three quarters this year was 648.6 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 12.9%. The net profit attributed to parent company owner’s was 87.2 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.9%.
Hong Kong-headquartered China Mobile intends to use proceeds from a share sale for core business projects, including the development of 5G networks and new infrastructure for cloud resources.
According to the prospectus, the total investment of the five projects will reach 156.9 billion yuan, of which 56 billion yuan would come from this IPO financing.
With a funding scale of 56 billion yuan, this listing will be the largest IPO in the A-share market in the past ten years, making China Mobile the fifth leading enterprise in terms of IPO scale in the A-share market, ranking after Agricultural Bank of China, PetroChina, China Shenhua Energy and China Construction Bank. China Mobile’s return to the A-shares market will lead the telecom market to usher in a new development pattern.
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It is worth mentioning that, among the fundraising projects, the planned investment of “5G Boutique Network Construction Project” is 98.3 billion yuan, of which the planned investment in equipment is 81.6 billion yuan, accounting for more than 80%. It is planned to build no less than 500,000 new 5G base stations in two years.