Firm says market conditions not yet right for brewery share offering it hoped would raise at least US$800m
SINGAPORE: Shares of Thai Beverage Plc slumped on Friday after the company deferred the initial public offering (IPO) of its brewery unit in Singapore once again, citing “prolonged challenging market conditions”.
The maker of Chang beer fell as much as 4.4%, the biggest decline in more than a year. It said on Thursday it would continue to monitor market conditions and explore opportunities to maximise shareholder value, including potentially reviewing the proposed spin-off listing “at an appropriate time”.
The announcement comes just months after the firm said it intended to resume the listing of BeerCo — a plan it has shelved multiple times — and conduct a public offering of as much as about 20% of the shares in the company. ThaiBev, controlled by Thai billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, was seeking to raise between US$800 million and $1 billion in the IPO, people familiar with the matter said previously.
“The hesitation on ThaiBev’s part may be linked to liquidity concerns in this region,” said Nirgunan Tiruchelvam, an analyst at Tellimer in Singapore. “It is an indictment of the market conditions” rather than a reflection of the operating performance of the beer business, he added.
BeerCo received conditional approval from the Singapore Exchange for a listing and started gauging investor demand for the offering in June. ThaiBev had previously halted plans for the IPO in May 2020 due to the country’s lockdown in the early days of Covid-19. A second effort was thwarted by the worst wave of the country’s outbreak.
The IPO was set to potentially be Singapore’s biggest since the US$1.7-billion offering of NetLink NBN Trust in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
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