China Telecom plans Shanghai listing

China Telecom Corp. Ltd.'s board on March 9 approved a proposal for an initial public offering and listing of up to 12,093,342,392 class A shares on the Main Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The shares, equivalent to 13% of China Telecom's total issued share capital, would be offered at 1 Chinese yuan each, a news release said. The telco may grant the lead underwriters an overallotment option of up to 15% of the shares in the proposed offering.

The shares would be offered to qualified persons and institutional investors through a mix of offline placing and online subscriptions or other methods that regulators allow. China Telecom may perform strategic placing of some of the shares to investors who satisfy certain legal requirements and conform to the company's development strategy.

The proposed listing is subject to clearance by relevant regulatory authorities, including China Securities Regulatory Commission. It would also need to secure approvals in an extraordinary general meeting of China Telecom shareholders as well as in separate meetings of domestic shareholders and class H shareholders.

China Telecom plans to invest the listing's proceeds in projects related to 5G, cloud-network infrastructure, and research and development related to sci-tech innovation.

The planned listing in Shanghai comes at a time when China Telecom, China Mobile Ltd., and China Unicom (Hong Kong) Ltd. are appealing the New York Stock Exchange's decision to delist their respective American depositary shares. The move follows government guidance that the telcos are covered by an executive order signed by former U.S. President Donald Trump, which bans trading with alleged "Communist Chinese military" companies.

China Telecom currently also has shares listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

As of March 9, US$1 was equivalent to 6.51 Chinese yuan.