State-owned Bangkok Commercial Asset Management, the country’s biggest manager of distressed assets, is looking to raise as much as 35 billion baht in its coming initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter.
BAM, 99.9% owned by the Bank of Thailand’s Financial Institutions Development Fund (FIDF), expects to raise between 32 billion and 35 billion baht based on an initial indicative price range, said one of the sources, requesting anonymity because the matter is private.
The amount targeted is significantly higher than the 23 billion baht estimated by Bloomberg earlier this year.
The company, which began gauging investor demand for its long-awaited initial public offering this week, is tentatively planning to start a domestic roadshow next week and an international one from Nov 25, another source said.
BAM plans to offer as many as 1.77 billion shares in the IPO, reducing the central bank’s stake to as low as 45.6%, according to its filing.
Details of the offering including timeline and size could still change as deliberations continue, the sources said. The indicative price range could be higher due to strong investor demand. A representative for BAM didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
BAM earned a net profit of 4 billion baht in the first half of this year, compared with 2.15 billion in the same period a year earlier, according to its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission in August.
Proceeds from the share offering will be used for non-performing loan and asset management, debt payment and working capital, it said.
BAM has put off its listing plan for more than three years because of snags in accounting compliance. Initially, it had planned to float the IPO shares in 2016.
BAM was established in 1999, two years after the Asian financial crisis, initially to manage distressed assets of the now-defunct Bangkok Bank of Commerce, which collapsed as a result of reckless lending and corruption.