Undeterred by poor responses to recent initial public offerings by Chinese internet companies, Tencent Technology is seeking to raise as much as US$200 million through an IPO that fund managers describe as demandingly priced.
The instant-messaging service operator, which started its pre-marketing on Monday for a listing on Hong Kong's main board as soon as the middle of next month, pitched itself at a preliminary pricing that put its PE ratio in the mid-teens, some fund managers said.
In contrast, listing candidate China Shipping Container Lines has cut its price to a single-digit ratio.
Investors became more cautious towards mainland portal plays after Shanda Interactive slashed the size of its Nasdaq stock market IPO last week by 49 per cent to US$152.35 million.
In a report, Cazenove, one of the IPO syndicate members, estimated the Shenzhen-based firm's net profit would grow 41.92 per cent year on year to 457 million yuan this year while revenue, mainly from its instant messaging service QQ, was projected to increase from 709 million yuan to 1.13 billion yuan this year.
QQ allows users to communicate with each other on computers, mobile phones and pagers. It has 226 million registered users, including 71 million active accounts.