Hutchison Whampoa Limited (HWL) today (18 January) has announced a planned Initial Public Offering of units in Hutchison Port Holdings Trust (HPH Trust) and the application by its wholly owned subsidiary, Hutchison Port Holdings Management Pte Limited (HPHM), which will act as Trustee Manager to list the units on the main board of Singapore Exchange Securities Trading.
HPH Trust is being established as a new publicly-traded entity to hold, operate and develop all of the Hutchison Group’s existing and future deep-water container port businesses in Guangdong Province in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau. The initial principal assets of HPH Trust include the Group’s interests in the operators and owners of deep-water container ports in Hong Kong and Yantian.
Announcing the move, HWL Group managing director, Canning Fok, said, “Ports are one of the HWL Group’s five core businesses and HWL will remain a significant unit holder of HPH Trust following the completion of the IPO”.
“This new public vehicle will be an integral part of the Group’s global ports operations going forward and will provide the best on-going structure for operation, development and financing of future growth of its port operations in the Pearl River Delta, which are, of course, cornerstone assets of Hutchison Ports Group,” he added.
Under the arrangements the HPH Trust will have access to all commercial, operational management, IT, procurement and other resources from within the Hutchison Ports Group and the HWL Group through HPHM as the Trustee Manager.
“There is significant potential for economic and trade growth in the Southern China region, which is already the largest trading hub in the world,” stressed Mr Fok.
Creating this new public vehicle, the Group will be able to take full advantage of such potential opportunities by creating a new funding platform to attract new investors seeking investments in what it calls “a pure play deep-water container ports related entity focused on container port opportunities in the Pearl River Delta” by providing an appropriate credit profile for financial institutions.
Mr Fox added that the significant equity capital raised by HWL through the IPO will enable the HWL Group to continue to expand its ports, infrastructure and other businesses aggressively while maintaining its strong financial profile and continuing to meet its stated objective of reducing overall consolidated debt.”
Mr Fock Siew Wah, Group Chairman of PSA International Pte Ltd, which holds a substantial minority interest in Hutchison Whampoa’s global ports operations as well as minority interests in certain of Hutchison’s port assets in Hong Kong, said, “PSA International is in full support of the establishment of this new entity and its proposed public listing”.
“We believe that the listing of the HPH Trust will best meet the growing needs of Hutchison Port Holdings’ global port operations and satisfy, at the same time, the needs of the international institutional investors and the general investing public for good investment grade business trust stocks. PSA International is firmly committed to be a supportive shareholder of the HPH Trust,” he added.
The implementation of the proposed IPO and listing is subject to, among other things, the ap