Kuala Lumpur: Petronas Chemicals Group Bhd. raised 12.8 billion ringgit (Dh15.1 billion) in Malaysia's biggest initial public offering after pricing shares at the top of its projected range.
Demand exceeded supply, with the institutional offering attracting orders for about 92.6 billion ringgit worth of shares, the Kuala Lumpur-based petrochemicals group said in a statement on Friday.
The company, a unit of state oil company Petroliam Nasional Bhd., priced the shares at 5.20 ringgit each for institutions, it said.
The benchmark FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index rose 18 per cent this year and reached a record on Wednesday, as international investors purchased more of the nation's stocks than at any time since at least 1995, according to data compiled by EPFR Global.
The IPO values Petronas Chemicals at 38.8 billion ringgit, or 16.3 times profit, a 38 per cent premium to the industry median.
"The environment is good for them," said Katherine Schapiro, a San Francisco-based manager at Sentinel Asset Management Inc., which oversees $20 billion. "There's a lot of demand for Asian stocks, especially big ones."
Banks advising on the sale set an indicative price range of 4.50 ringgit to 5.20 ringgit per share for institutions, two people familiar with the matter said on October 26. Individual investors will get a 3 per cent discount, according to its prospectus.
Global interest
"The book-building exercise attracted significant interest from various types of investors globally," Petronas Chemicals chairman Wan Zulkiflee Wan Ariffin said in the statement.
CIMB Group Holdings Bhd., Deutsche Bank AG and Morgan Stanley are managing the IPO, while Citigroup Inc. and UBS AG are co-bookrunners for the portion of the sale to institutional investors, according to the prospectus.
At the midpoint, the IPO would give government-owned Petronas a 184 per cent return on its per-share stake valued at 1.71 ringgit, according to the prospectus and Bloomberg data.
