China Mobile is back. A year after being kicked out of the New York Stock Exchange, it will raise up to $8.8bn in a Shanghai listing. The world’s largest mobile operator by subscriber numbers is on track to be China’s biggest flotation in a decade. It may be one of the few remaining safe places for local investors looking for stable returns and yields.
China Mobile, valued at more than $120bn, was one of the three local telcos — along with smaller state-owned rivals China Telecom and China Unicom — that were forced to delist last year from New York. That followed the Trump administration’s ban on US investors holding stakes in companies with suspected Chinese military links.
The sector is enjoying good times. Take-up of 5G is going strong in a country with 1.6bn mobile users. China Mobile has tripled the number of its 5G subscribers over a year to 331m in the third quarter. The proceeds of the listing will be used to build out infrastructure and cloud services.