SINGAPORE: Thai Beverage Plc has deferred the initial public offering of its brewery unit in Singapore once again, citing “prolonged challenging market conditions” for its decision.
The Singapore-listed maker of Chang beer said it would continue to monitor market conditions and explore opportunities to maximise shareholder value, including potentially reviewing the proposed spin-off listing “at an appropriate time”.
The announcement comes just months after the company said it intended to resume the listing of BeerCo and conduct a public offering of as much as about 20% of the shares in the unit.
ThaiBev, controlled by billionaire Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, was seeking to raise between US$800 million and $1 billion from the IPO, people familiar with the matter said previously.
BeerCo received conditional approval from the Singapore Exchange for a listing and started gauging investor demand for the offering in June.
ThaiBev previously halted plans for the IPO in May 2020 due to the country’s lockdown in the early days of Covid-19. A second effort was thwarted by the worst wave of the outbreak.
The IPO was set to potentially be Singapore’s biggest since the US$1.7-billion offering of NetLink NBN Trust in 2017, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
