Rakuten Bank, Parent Seek to Raise $881 Million in Tokyo IPO

Filipe Pacheco and Mayumi Negishi, Bloomberg News

Signage displayed at the Rakuten New Year Conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, Jan. 26, 2023. Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten Group priced 250 billion yen ($1.9 billion) of bonds on Friday, giving the company an important injection of liquidity after it was cut further into junk by S&P Global Ratings last month. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- An initial public offering by Rakuten Bank Ltd. is set to fetch the company and its parent as much as 116.6 billion yen ($881 million), putting it on track to be Japan’s biggest listing in more than four years.

The banking unit of Rakuten Group Inc. set an indicative band of 1,630 yen to 1,960 yen per share for its Tokyo IPO on Wednesday. The stock will list on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on April 21, according to a statement.

Almost 60 million shares are being offered in the IPO, with 16% of them being sold by the lender and 84% by holder Rakuten Group. The offering can be upsized by an over-allotment option of about 4.4 million shares, according to terms of the deal obtained by Bloomberg News.

It is set to be the largest IPO in Japan since Dec. 2018, when SoftBank Corp. listed following a jumbo $21 billion IPO. Rakuten’s deal is set to be bigger than any since then even if shares are priced at the bottom of the marketed range and the over-allotment is not exercised, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The planned listing is part of a push by the group to expand in financial services. Stiff competition from Amazon.com Inc. has capped its core e-commerce revenues, while aggressive promotions for its mobile unit are saddling the company with losses.

Rakuten Group shares rose as much as 8.1% on Wednesday, the most since October, before ending 5.8% higher. Share prices have more than halved since a 2021 peak.

Proceeds from the IPO could potentially plug Rakuten Group’s “liquidity shortfall at its non-financial unit,” said Sharon Chen, an analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Read More: Rakuten Would Need More Funds Even After Bank IPO: Credit React

April 13 is the expected pricing date. Daiwa Securities Group, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Mizuho Financial Group Inc. are joint global coordinators on the deal.

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