By P.R. VENKAT
SINGAPORE—Asian Pay Television Trust, an investment vehicle for Taiwan’s biggest cable-TV operator, is poised to raise around S$1.4 billion (US$1.1 billion) in Singapore’s second-biggest initial public offering this year after pricing shares in the upper half of the indicative range.
The trust will hold the assets of Taiwan Broadband Communications, which is majority-owned by two funds managed by Australia’s Macquarie Group Ltd.
—Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund, or MIIF, and Macquarie Korea Opportunities Fund. Both funds have said they plan to sell their stakes in the company to the trust.
Asian Pay Television priced the IPO at S$0.97 a unit, just above the median point of the indicative price range of S$0.92-S$1.00, people with knowledge of the deal said. It plans to start taking orders from retail investors on Friday and to list on the Singapore stock exchange on May 29th, the people said.
A Macquarie spokeswoman declined to comment on the pricing.
The deal will likely further enhance Singapore’s status in the eyes of investors as Southeast Asia’s top venue for trust listings. It also ranks first this year in equity fundraising by deal value, with US$4.48 billion of deals so far, according to data provider Dealogic. Among those deals was the US$1.3 billion IPO in March of a China-focused real-estate investment trust by Mapletree Investments Pte., a unit of Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte.
Asian Pay Television’s IPO comes at a time when Southeast Asian markets and equity offerings are on the rise. As of Wednesday, the Philippines’s benchmark index had gained 27% this year, while those in Indonesia and Thailand had both gained 17%. Singapore’s was up by around 8.7%.
Elsewhere, BTS Group Holdings PCL
last month raised US$2.13 billion in an IPO of its skytrain business in Thailand. In Indonesia, some of the country’s richest families are planning around US$1 billion in IPOs, while deals worth billions of dollars are now expected to come to market in Malaysia following national elections there earlier this month.
Established in 1999, Taiwan Broadband has an interest in five cable-TV networks in Taiwan, reaching more than 1 million homes. The company has secured commitments from as many as nine cornerstone investors who took nearly a third of the shares on offer. They included financier George Soros, insurer Prudential
PLC, and hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management Group
LLC. Cornerstone investors generally commit to holding a significant stake for a set period, demonstrating their confidence in the shares.
Singapore-listed MIIF had said last month that it had received shareholder approval to inject its 47.5% stake in Taiwan Broadband into Asian Pay Television. MIIF’s shareholders stand to receive at least S$0.408 a share if the sale is completed. As of Dec. 31, Taiwan Broadband accounted for 61% of MIIF’s portfolio value.
Asian Pay Television’s offering follows other recent trust listings in Singapore, which has become a top venue for such deals as they have become increasingly popular among investors. In many cases, the companies listing via trusts have assets that are fully developed or are being developed, offering attractive returns on investments at a time of suppressed interest rates. Asian Pay Television, for example, plans to pay a yield of 8.4% in 2014, people with knowledge of the deal said.
Trusts that have recently listed in Singapore have outperformed the benchmark Straits Times Index. Shares in Mapletree Greater China Commercial Trust,
which listed in March, have gained 21%, while those of Japanese REIT Croesus Retail Trust
have gained 16.7%.
J.P. Morgan Chase
Co., DBS Group Holdings Ltd.,
CIMB Group Holdings Bhd.
and Macquarie are handling the Asian Pay Television deal.
Write to P.R. Venkat at venkat.pr@wsj.com
Asian Pay Television Poised to Raise $1.1 Billion in IPO
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