China United Telecommunications Group plans to resell its loss-making paging business, recently transferred from its Hong Kong-listed arm Unicom, to China Satellite Communications Corp (ChinaSat) at a small premium.
ChinaSat has agreed to pay 677.33 million yuan for a 58.88 per cent stake in Shanghai-listed Unicom Guomai Communications, which offers paging services nationwide and sells handsets.
China United holds the stake through wholly owned unit Guoxin Paging Corp, which it acquired from Unicom for 2.75 billion yuan.
The price tag is at a 3.22 million yuan premium to Guomai's net asset value at the end of June. A Unicom spokesman described the price as fair and said it had been approved by independent directors, shareholders and independent financial advisers.
The parties reached an agreement on Wednesday, just one week after Unicom completed the sale of its paging business to the parent.
At the end of last year, Unicom transferred its paging operations to China United while acquiring the parent's mobile businesses in nine provinces. The paging assets carried a 3.47 billion yuan book value in Unicom's accounts.