Sept. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Initial public offerings in Hong Kong by Metallurgical Corp. of China Ltd. and Sinopharm Group Co. raised a combined $3.5 billion, people with knowledge of the sales said.
Metallurgical Corp., a state-owned construction and engineering company, and an investor sold HK$18.2 billion ($2.3 billion) of stock, two of the people said. Sinopharm Group Co., China’s biggest drug distributor, raised HK$8.73 billion, according to two other people.
The sales collected more than the total value of Hong Kong IPOs in the first half as Chinese companies drive a recovery in offerings in the city. An index of mainland companies traded in Hong Kong has rallied 37 percent since the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. a year ago, the second-best performance among major benchmarks tracked by Bloomberg.
“Investors are counting on the Chinese economy to keep its momentum,” said Francis Lun, general manager of Hong Kong-based Fulbright Securities Ltd. “With the kind of sentiment in the market at the moment, they’ll go after the IPO of any company with a decent track record.”
Sinopharm’s IPO drew about $114 billion of orders as Hong Kong investors sought almost 600 times the amount of stock available to them, the people said. They declined to be identified before an announcement.
The sale values Sinopharm at 25 times estimated 2010 earnings, almost double the ratio for McKesson Corp., the largest U.S. drug seller. It attracted buyers including the Government of Singapore Investment Corp.
Health Overhaul
China, the world’s third-largest economy, plans to spend 850 billion yuan ($124 billion) overhauling its health-care system. The push is part of an effort to spur domestic consumption and reduce the country’s reliance on exports.
“I view this industry as a relatively safe environment where you have a stable growth rate,” said Jinsong Du, a health-care analyst at Credit Suisse AG in Hong Kong. “For the long term, the health-care reforms should help the industry to consolidate.”
Sinopharm sold shares at the top end of a range marketed to investors, while Metallurgical Corp.’s stock fetched HK$6.35 apiece after it tried to get between HK$6.16 and HK$6.81, said the people. Sinopharm will start trading Sept. 23 and Metallurgical Corp. will debut the day after.
Last week in its mainland listing, Metallurgical Corp. raised 18.97 billion yuan in the second-biggest IPO in Shanghai this year. The company sold 3.5 billion shares at 5.42 yuan, the maximum it sought, it said at the time.
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc., China International Capital Corp. and Citic Securities Ltd. arranged Metallurgical’s Hong Kong sale. CICC, UBS AG and Morgan Stanley advised Sinopharm.
