Huge rush for toy firm's IPO freezes $542.9b

Bloomberg and staff reporter

Retail investors have applied to borrow more than HK$542.9 billion to participate in Chinese toy maker Bloks's Hong Kong initial public offering, showing a demand for new listings.

Through margin financing, the amount being sought for reflects subscriptions more than 3,717 times the number of the shares available to them if the price is set at the upper end of the IPO's price range, according to TradeGo data displayed on the Futubull trading application.

The Shanghai-based Bloks, which assembles the Ultraman and Transformer toys, has been taking investor orders since Tuesday and is set to list shares on January 10.

It is offering 24.1 million shares to raise as much as HK$1.5 billion, with local retail investors being allocated 10 percent of the shares. The debut also comes against the backdrop of a rally in fellow toymaker Pop Mart International.

Seven other firms are accepting orders at the same time. Among them, nutritional products distributor Numans Health Food performed relatively well, with brokers lending HK$360 million in margin financing, 12.3 times the public offering size of HK$146 million.

In contrast, New Gonow Recreational Vehicles, Yibin City Commercial Bank, and Beijing Saimo Technology saw weaker demand, with their public offerings undersubscribed.

In other news, Morgan Stanley said Chinese battery giant Contemporary Amperex Technology -- CATL -- plans to raise as much as US$7.7 billion (HK$60.06 billion) through its secondary listing in Hong Kong.

If the fundraising amount reaches US$7.7 billion, the company will surpass Postal Savings Bank of China (1658) to become the seventh largest fundraising company in Hong Kong's history, just behind AIA (1299), Alibaba (9988), and the four major state-owned banks, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (1398), China Construction Bank (0939), Agricultural Bank of China (1288), and Bank of China (3988).

Its A-shares fell 2.7 percent to close at 258.78 yuan (HK$275.65) yesterday.