CATL starts gauging interest for potential US$5 billion Hong Kong listing

[HONG KONG] Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Limited (CATL), the world’s largest maker of batteries for electric vehicles, began gauging investor interest for its Hong Kong listing from Tuesday (May 6), according to terms of the deal seen by Bloomberg News.

CATL, as the electric-vehicle battery giant is known, is moving ahead with the deal after having passed the Hong Kong stock exchange’s listing hearing. The company’s listing date is to be determined, the terms showed, but Bloomberg News has previously reported that CATL was looking to start taking investor orders as early as May for a deal that may fetch at least US$5 billion.

A US congressional committee in April called for Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase to withdraw from working on the planned listing.

House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party Chairman John Moolenaar, in letters addressed to the two banks’ chief executive officers, highlighted the company’s inclusion in a Pentagon blacklist in January, citing its alleged links to the Chinese military.

Bank of America and JPMorgan are still working on the offering, according to CATL’s post-listing-hearing documents dated Tuesday.

The Shenzhen-listed company is barrelling ahead with the offering in spite of the turbulent markets that have been whipsawing on the back of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Given its scale, the deal’s success will likely influence investor confidence in Hong Kong and Chinese companies, which have suffered amid all the market turmoil related to tariffs.

At US$5 billion, CATL’s float would be the world’s biggest since cold-storage real estate investment trust Lineage’s US$5.1 billion deal last year, and Hong Kong’s largest in years, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

CATL’s shares have fallen 13 per cent this year in Shenzhen, compared with a 4.2 per cent decline in the CSI 300 Index. BLOOMBERG