Hong Kong: Dongshan Precision slips on debut after US$1.3 billion listing as city's IPO market sets record

Chinese circuit-board maker Suzhou Dongshan Precision Manufacturing fell on its Hong Kong trading debut on October 28, dropping as much as 6.1% before paring the decline to about 1.6% in midmorning trading, Dow Jones reported. The maker of printed circuit boards for AI devices priced 113.8 million shares at HK$86.80 each, 7.5% below the maximum indicative price, raising gross proceeds of HK$9.88 billion, equivalent to about US$1.26 billion; cornerstone investors including JPMorgan Asset Management, Alibaba Investment and Singapore-based fund Aurora SF covered about half the offering.

Tech stocks held the market up; Pop Mart bucked the trend

The debut landed in a split market: Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was 0.3% higher and the city's tech gauge rose 1.6%, with heavyweight technology names Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan, Xiaomi, JD.com and Kuaishou each up about 1% to 1.4%, while Pop Mart slipped about 4.4% after releasing third-quarter revenue figures. Dongshan's soft debut reflects volatile sentiment toward tech stocks in recent months — Alibaba, for example, is trading nearly 50% below its peak a year ago, and the Hang Seng Tech Index has slumped 30% year to date.

A record year for Hong Kong listings

Despite the mixed single-stock performances, Hong Kong's IPO market as a whole is running hot: the city is the world's second-largest IPO market behind Nasdaq, with more than HK$388 billion raised across 116 listings in the first nine months, a record for the period, according to an October report by KPMG. Dongshan's offering of more than US$1 billion is the latest example of that wave.