Lotte Chemical Titan scales back new shares offered to funds by a quarter to 524m

A copy of the Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Sdn Bhd's prospectus.

KUALA LUMPUR: Lotte Chemical Titan Holding Bhd, which is seeking a listing on the Main Board of Bursa Malaysia, has reduced the number of new shares offered to institutions to 524.21 million, or nearly a quarter, due to lack of strong response for the shares at RM8 each.

In a statement on Monday, Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank IB) said the new offering was a reduction of 160.48 million shares or 23.4% from the original shares of 684.70 million shares under its initial public offering (IPO).

Maybank IB said although the institutional offering had been scheduled to close last Friday, the price determination date did not occur after taking into account the overall demand through price discovery.

“The company (Lotte Chemical Titan), after consultation with the joint global coordinators, decided to reduce the offering size for the institutional offering which will now involve 524.21 million shares,” it said.

The closing time and date of the institutional offering were revised to 10pm on Monday while the date to determine the price would be on Tuesday.

Maybank IB said the other components of the listing scheme, which is subject to clawback and reallocation, remain unchanged. 

“Accordingly, Lotte Chemical Titan's entire enlarged issued share capital to be listed and quoted on the Main Market of Bursa Securities assuming no exercise of the over-allotment option will be RM6.686bil comprising 2.307 billion shares instead. 

“The size of the over-allotment option of up to 55.537 million shares remains unchanged, representing up to 9.6% of the new IPO offering size," it said.

StarBiz reported that Lotte Chemical Titian's new offer price would be RM6.50 a share compared with the previous range of between RM7.60 and RM8 a share.

Lotte Chemical has successfully secured five domestic cornerstone investors. 

They are Permodalan Nasional Bhd, Maybank Asset Management Sdn Bhd, Maybank Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd, Eastspring Investments Bhd, and Great Eastern Life Assurance (M) Bhd. 

The lower price for the IPO is expected to draw in further quality global investors.