The world’s biggest telecom operator in the world by subscribers, China Mobile, has raised Rmb48.7bn ($7.6bn) on the Shanghai exchange in China’s biggest public share offering in a decade. A low-growth investment case was offset by the regulatory clouds hanging over other blue-chip mainland tech companies.
Its share price climbed on its first day, against a falling market. The offer price of Rmb57.58 put a 40 per cent premium to the closing price of its Hong Kong-listed shares. That gap is not unusual for secondary listings in the mainland given the more closed nature of the market.
But compared with regional peers, it is not pricey. Shares of China Mobile trade over 12 times estimated 2021 earnings, in line with telecoms such as Japan’s KDDI and below other Hong Kong-listed mobile operators such as SmartTone.