The listing of Rakuten Bank Ltd will mark a hefty cash influx for its parent, which has struggled with years of losses from the costly build-out of its mobile phone business. Rakuten Bank priced the IPO at 1,400 yen per share, the top of a 1,300 yen to 1,400 yen range. That values the offering at about 83.3 billion yen ($624 million), excluding a "greenshoe" option of additional stock. It will be Japan's biggest listing since the $23 billion IPO of SoftBank Group Corp's telecom unit in December 2018, according to Refinitiv. Rakuten had initially indicated a range of 1,630 yen to 1,960 yen a share for the listing.
"At this price I think it will do well - personally, I think it looks cheap," said Naoki Fujiwara, senior fund manager at Shinkin Asset Management. Overall, Japanese bank shares look undervalued after being sold off in tandem with U.S. and European banks in the recent global market turmoil, despite having healthy balance sheets, he said. The shares are scheduled to list on April 21 on the Tokyo exchange's Prime Market. The IPO price values the bank at around 238 billion yen ($1.8 billion), according to Reuters calculations. It will mean proceeds of 71.7 billion yen for parent Rakuten, less than it had initially expected. The listing will also see the e-commerce site lower its stake in Rakuten to around 63%. Rakuten Bank is Japan's largest internet bank by number of accounts, with more than 13 million at the end of last year. It is one of a number of fintech companies run by Rakuten aimed at drawing customers into the group ecosystem. Users accumulate points by using Rakuten services from credit cards, to shopping and insurance. The points can then be used to buy groceries, pay bills or book travel. Rakuten is selling 53.95 million existing shares to domestic and overseas investors, while the bank plans to issue 5.55 million new shares.
($1 = 132.4600 yen) (Reporting by Miho Uranaka; Editing by Jamie Freed and David Holmes)
