Hutchison Telecommunications International Ltd's (HTIL) high-profile initial public offering suffered a setback yesterday as the firm was forced to trim the price range after a lukewarm response from investors.
The Hutchison Whampoa spin-off said the price range had been cut to between HK$6.01 and $7.04 a share from the original indicative range of $6.52 to $7.55.
The revised price range represents a 6.8 per cent to 7.8 per cent reduction from the original offer size and lowers Hutchison's proceeds to between HK$6.94 billion and $8.13 billion.
Hutchison, which is selling a 26.7 per cent stake in HTIL, was hoping to raise HK$8.72 billion when it launched the share sale two weeks ago.
Yesterday's decision marked the third time the offering had been downsized over the past month. Hutchison originally aimed to value HTIL at as much as US$5.9 billion and sell a third of its stake for between $1.5 billion and $2 billion.
But Hutchison later agreed to cut HTIL's valuation to US$5 billion and reduce the size of the stake being sold to 25 per cent after its underwriters tested the market.
When Hutchison launched the offer two weeks ago, the valuation of HTIL was further cut to between US$3.8 billion and $4.4 billion.
