National oil and gas conglomerate PTT Plc is pushing ahead with its plan to list its wholly owned subsidiary, PTT Oil and Retail Business Co (PTTOR), on the Stock Exchange of Thailand by floating shares accounting for 25%.
PTT reported to the SET on Thursday it filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to start the process for an initial public offering (IPO), offering shares of ownership in PTTOR to institutional investors and retail investors.
PTT president and chief executive Chansin Treenuchagron said PTTOR will offer up to 2.7 billion newly issued ordinary shares, excluding any additional shares that could be offered for an over-allotment option.
PTTOR will also allocate up to 300 million newly issued ordinary shares exclusively to existing shareholders of PTT. Newly issued ordinary shares of PTTOR will dilute PTT's ownership to no less than 75%.
The long-delayed IPO has been in development since 2018, but the process of approval for asset separation from its mother firm was complicated and took a long time.
PTTOR is expected to be PTT's seventh core business to be listed on the SET, following PTT Exploration and Production Plc, PTT Global Chemical Plc, Thai Oil Plc, IRPC Plc, Global Power Synergy Plc and Global Green Chemical Plc.
PTTOR's main assets include subsidiaries in oil retail and non-oil units in Thailand and abroad, oil pipelines and jet fuel services, cooking gas, lubricant oil and some cooking gas depots.
International oil trading units and some cooking gas depots will still remain under PTT.
PTTOR has registered capital of 8.78 billion baht.
The company plans to use part of the money raised by the IPO to expand its oil retailer operations globally.
Its main business is oil retail and wholesale with 80% of net profits last year coming from oil, while 20% was from non-oil businesses.
In the next five years, the company expects the oil segment to decline to 70%.
PTTOR operates 1,894 oil pumps, 1,700 of which are in Thailand, with the remainder in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and the Philippines, as well as 2,750 Cafe Amazon outlets.
In January, PTTOR announced a plan to invest 77.4 billion baht over the next five years (2020-2024), mostly in new oil pumps and non-oil chain expansion.
Part of the money will come from the IPO, however the company declined to disclose the amount.
