Offering's retail portion was nearly 80 times oversubscribed
Proceeds to fund global expansion, R&D, sales, services network
Cornerstone investors include Oaktree Capital, Pinpoint Asset
Updates with closing share price in headline, paragraphs 1, 2, and 6
By Donny Kwok and Yantoultra Ngui
HONG KONG/SINGAPORE, Feb 11 (Reuters) - Wuxi Lead Intelligent Equipment 0470.HK closed flat in its trading debut in Hong Kong on Wednesday after the Chinese industrial automation equipment maker raised HK$4.9 billion ($627 million) in a share sale.
Its shares opened at HK$46.26 each, about 1% higher than its offer price of HK$45.80, and ended flat at the issue price after trading between HK$45.04 and HK$46.54 with 26.37 million shares worth HK$1.22 billion changing hands.
"Since the stock is already listed on the A share market, its H share price is influenced by the performance of its A share counterpart," said Kenny Ng, a securities strategist at China Everbright Securities International.
"As a result, stocks with such an A plus H dual-listing structure typically exhibit relatively stable fluctuations on their first trading day in the Hong Kong market."
A-shares trade in China and H-shares trade in Hong Kong.
In Shenzhen, Wuxi Lead's 300450.SZ A shares closed 3.8% lower at 55.35 yuan ($8.01), after falling as much as 4.6% to 54.9 yuan, the lowest since January 12.
It offered 107.7 million H shares at a maximum offer price of HK$45.80 each.
Founded in 2002, Wuxi Lead builds machines and production-line systems used to make battery cells and packs for electric vehicles and energy storage, as well as equipment for solar cell and module manufacturing.
Wuxi Lead's revenue for the nine months ended September 30 rose 14.9% to 10.4 billion yuan ($1.5 billion) from 9.0 billion yuan a year earlier, while net profit almost doubled to 1.2 billion yuan from 587 million yuan.
On January 25, the company said it expected its full-year 2025 net profit to jump 424.3% to 529.2% from a year earlier.
Listing proceeds will fund the global expansion of its R&D and sales and service network, and will also go toward broadening its portfolio, strengthening digital infrastructure, and providing working capital, its prospectus said.
The retail portion of the offering was nearly 80 times oversubscribed and the international tranche 10.5 times, according to the company's allotment results announcement on Tuesday.
Cornerstone investors include Oaktree Capital Management, Pinpoint Asset Management Limited and Aspex Master Fund, according to its prospectus.
Wuxi Lead's offering adds to a pipeline of China-related deals looking to tap Hong Kong's revived equity capital markets.
Hong Kong logged its strongest start to a year since 2021, with IPOs and second listings raising about $5.5 billion in January, the most since $7.6 billion in January 2021, LSEG data showed.
Citic Securities and JP Morgan JPM.N are joint sponsors of Wuxi Lead's offering.
($1 = 6.9150 Chinese yuan renminbi)
($1 = 7.8153 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Donny Kwok in Hong Kong and Yantoultra Ngui in Singapore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Sonali Paul, Thomas Derpinghaus and Kim Coghill)
((Yantoultra.Ngui@thomsonreuters.com;))
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