An infrastructure fund controlled by Thailand’s BTS Group has raised 62.51 billion baht (US$2.13 billion) from the country’s largest ever initial public offering (IPO).
The offering is also the most sizeable IPO in Asia this year and comes as investors interest in the Southeast Asian country intensifies amid strong economic growth and robust domestic equity market performance. The IPO is bigger than Thai Oil’s US$727.6 million offering in 2004.
The fund, named BTS Rail Mass Transit Growth Infrastructure Fund (BTSGIF), is the first infrastructure fund in Thailand, and received strong investor demand both on the international and domestic tranches. This allowed the BTS Group to price the offering, which consists of 5.788 billion units, at the top end of the initial price range of 10.40 baht to 10.80 baht per unit.
The international tranche, which accounted for about 43% of the deal or US$909.1 million, was massively oversubscribed with final allocation going to 200 institutional investors, according to a source.
About 75% of the international tranche was taken by long-only funds, says the source. The domestic tranche, which accounted for 24% of the total deal size, was also well-oversubscribed.
The sponsor BTS Group, which engages in mass transit, property and media businesses, and operates Bangkok’s elevated train system, called SkyTrain, subscribed to one-third of the total units in offer amounting to about US$710.3 million .
At the final price, the fund will provide a yield of 5.8% to its investors. BTS Group plans to use half of the proceeds to bid for four new mass transit lines.
The fund will start trading on April 19. Morgan Stanley, Phatra Securities and UBS were the joint bookrunners.
