China Mobile is moving ahead with its plans to list its shares in Shanghai after the U.S. moved to have the company removed from its exchange listing.
The company reportedly approved the move to launch a potential $6 billion listing in Shanghai ahead of its removal from the New York Stock Exchange.
China Mobile said Tuesday that it plans to sell only up to 964.8 million shares at its upcoming Shanghai listing. The amount of shares represents about 4.5% of the company's total issued shares.
The company has yet to announce the official pricing of its planned listing. China Mobile said it may expand its offering by an additional 15% through an over-allotment option if the demands for its shares are sufficiently high.
The company said it plans to use the proceeds of the share sale to fund its development of premium 5G networks and infrastructures for applications such as cloud computing and advanced telecommunications.
China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom are set to be delisted from the NYSE after the exchange rejected their appeals. The delisting is part of a U.S. investment restriction imposed by the Trump administration last year.
In March, China Telecom also announced plans to raise new capital by selling up to 12.09 billion shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
Under the Trump-era restriction against Chinese technology companies, Americans had been barred from investing in Chinese stocks accused of having ties with the Chinese military. The NYSE previously said it would comply with the new rules. The exchange later made a u-turn and said it would accept appeals from the trio to remain on the exchange.
Last week, the NYSE said it had rejected all of the three companies' appeals. The exchange submitted an application to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday last week to start the process of delisting the three companies.
The NYSE's decision to move ahead with the delisting has been praised by U.S. industry groups. The Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA) said Tuesday that the decision to delist the companies was the "right thing" to do.
"For decades, the Chinese Communist Party - with Wall Street's help - has exploited US capital markets and American investors to build its national champion Chinese companies that help modernize the capabilities of the People's Liberation Army," the coalition's chairman, Zach Mottl, said.
