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Legend's Raycom restructured before IPO

By Xu Shenglan (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-10-20 17:47

Beijing Raycom Real Estate Development Co Ltd, which will be the third listed company in Legend Holdings Ltd, will complete asset restructuring by the end of this year.

The company expects to meet the IPO conditions in 2010, Raycom executive CEO Zheng Zhigang told 21st Century Business Herald.

Three Legend Holdings real estate projects in Shenzhen, Beijing and Tianjin, worth about 60 billion yuan ($8.78 billion), went on auction in Shanghai United Assets and Equity Exchange (SUAEE) recently.

The company is not selling the assets but to inject them to Raycom through the auction in SUAEE to realize its IPO as a whole, said Zheng Zhigang.

Legend Holdings Ltd will sell Shenzhen Raycom and Tianjin Lihe's 90 percent stake for nearly 440 billion yuan and 126.6 billion yuan respectively, and Beijing Wangdu Real Estate's 1.5 percent shares for 4.15 million yuan.

Raycom will finish its domestic asset restructuring once all three companies' shares are sold to new firms. Companies affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Sciences have been given the preference in buying shares.

Raycom will be listed as a whole company, even though the company previously considered spinning off residential property through A-shares and self-sustaining property by the Real Estate Investment Trust, which encountered policy obstacles,

Raycom is introducing strategic investors and restructuring assets at the same time. The company is maintaining cooperative relations with the Dutch bank ING, US-based Warburg Pincus and other foreign investment companies.

"Raycom will maintain its principle of allocating land properly rather than making changes for being listed", said Zheng Zhigang, "Now Raycom reserves 3 million square meters of land for development over the next 3-5 years."

The downturn of domestic real estate will have an impact on Raycom's performance, but it won't put any financial pressure on, he added.

Zheng says sales of residential property have reached 2 billion yuan this year with another 300 million yuan to achieve the annual target, which has dropped by 30 percent due to the slowdown of overall economy.

In 2007, Raycom's sales of residential property reached 2.875 billion yuan with more than 400 million yuan in profits.

Raycom's total assets are now 10 billion yuan. Its proportion of residential and self-sustaining properties is 7:3, with the latter's rental income 200 million yuan, 21st Century Business Herald reported.