Japan’s Rakuten prices bank IPO at top of downgraded range

Japan’s Rakuten Group Inc priced on Thursday the initial public offering of its Rakuten Bank Ltd arm at the high end of a scaled-back range, placing it on track for Tokyo’s biggest listing in more than four years.

The 1,400 yen per share price was at the top of its 1,300 yen to 1,400 yen lowered range, a bank filing showed.

That valued the IPO at about 83.3 billion yen ($624 million) excluding a greenshoe option, making it Japan’s biggest listing since the $23 billion IPO of SoftBank Group Corp’s telecom unit in December 2018, according to Refinitiv.

The listing of Rakuten Bank, first reported by Reuters last month, will represent a hefty cash boost for its parent, an e-commerce giant that has struggled for years with losses from the costly build-out of its mobile phone business.

Rakuten had initially indicated a range of 1,630 yen to 1,960 yen a share for the listing. That would have put the deal at around 107 billion yen, excluding a greenshoe option of around 4.5 million shares.

Rakuten is selling 53.95 million existing shares of the bank to domestic and overseas investors, while the bank plans to issue 5.55 million new shares. Reuters