Chinese electric vehicle maker Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology and China Vanke, unit Onewo Inc shares, two of Hong Kong‘s largest initial public offerings (IPO) of 2022, are set to open in the red, according to grey market trading on Wednesday.
Leapmotor shares, priced at HK$48 each to raise $800 million, dropped 15% on a grey market offered by Hong Kong brokerage Phillips Securities Group.
Shares in property services firm Onewo, backed by developer Vanke, were down nearly 8% in the same market.
Onewo raised $733 million by pricing its shares at HK$49.35.
The two stocks start officially trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.
The deals are the largest completed IPOs in the city in 2022 where volumes have fallen sharply as a result of ongoing geopolitical tensions, surging inflation and higher interest rates in many parts of the world.
Their debuts follow a grim day on the city’s markets on Wednesday.
Hong Kong‘s Hang Seng Index fell by 3.4% on Wednesday, as the Tech Index lost 3.85% and the Property Services Index shed 5.86%.
Leapmotor and Onewo received a lukewarm response from Hong Kong‘s retail investors who did not take up the full amount of shares offered to them in the IPO, according to both firms’ filings.
The city’s army of mom-and-pop investors in the past have swarmed popular IPOs subscribing for thousands of times more shares than were on offer to them.
Onewo’s institutional tranche was 3.3 times covered and Leapmotor’s was 2.3 times covered, the filings showed.
Unallocated shares from retail investors were sold to institutional investors.
Reuters