The world’s largest EV battery maker priced its Hong Kong listing at HK$263 in May 2025. Its shares touched HK$701 before the placement was announced.
The deal builds on a week of shareholder activity: a Sinopec unit sold $770M of CATL stock at HK$708 on 22 April; a Shenzhen block trade of 58 million A-shares at a 5.1% discount completed the same week, 1.1x oversubscribed.
CATL (Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd.), the world’s largest manufacturer of electric vehicle batteries, is seeking to raise up to $5 billion through a share placement in Hong Kong, with the bookbuilding process now launched and terms being communicated to investors.
The deal, if completed at full size, would be the largest new share sale in Hong Kong in approximately four years, since Kuaishou Technology raised $6.2 billion in its 2021 initial public offering.
CATL completed a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in May 2025, raising approximately $4.6 billion at HK$263 per share. Its Hong Kong-listed shares have since surged approximately 160%, reaching an all-time high of HK$701 before the placement reports began circulating on 13 April.
The structure is a follow-on placement from CATL’s own balance sheet, the company selling new shares to institutional investors to raise capital, rather than a secondary sale by existing shareholders.
CATL has said in previous regulatory filings that a significant portion of funds raised will be used to fund the construction of a 7.3 billion-euro battery plant in Hungary, part of its overseas manufacturing expansion to serve European automaker clients.
The company also supplies Tesla, Stellantis, BMW, Volkswagen, Xiaomi, and Nio. Its FY2025 net income of 72.2 billion yuan ($10.6 billion) was up 42.28% year-on-year, reported in March. In Q1 2025, net profit rose 32.9% year-on-year to 14 billion yuan, the fastest pace in nearly two years.
The week preceding the placement launch has seen significant ancillary shareholder activity. On 22 April, a Sinopec unit, Sinopec (Hong Kong), sold 8.5 million Hong Kong-listed CATL shares at HK$708 per share through an accelerated bookbuild managed by Goldman Sachs, raising approximately $770 million.
The price represented a 3.8% discount to CATL’s closing price that day. Sinopec agreed to a 90-day lock-up on its remaining CATL stake. Separately, a Shenzhen A-share block trade of 58 million shares (1.27% of CATL’s total share capital) was completed by the entity Ningbo Lianhe Chuangxin at CNY410.34 per share, a 5.1% discount to the closing price, distributed across 30 institutional investors who are restricted from selling for six months.
That deal drew bids from 50 institutions and was 1.1 times oversubscribed. The scale of secondary market demand for CATL paper at modest discounts to market is the context in which CATL itself is now seeking to place $5 billion.
The discount question is the deal’s key pricing variable. Investors reportedly want at least a 10% discount to CATL’s Shenzhen-listed shares; CATL has been angling for a mid-single-digit discount, Bloomberg and Reuters reported in the lead-up to launch. Hong Kong shares typically trade at a discount to their Shenzhen equivalents; CATL’s Hong Kong shares have historically traded at a smaller discount than comparable listings.
Midea Group priced its own Hong Kong follow-on at a roughly 20% discount when it raised $4 billion in September 2025. Five comparable mainland-to-Hong Kong listings since 2022 have priced at discounts of 28% to 37%. If CATL succeeds in pricing at a mid-single-digit discount, it would represent a meaningfully better outcome for the company than the market precedent suggests is typical.
CATL’s market position warrants context. It held a 45.54% share of China’s power battery installation market in March 2026, down from 49.10% in February — still dominant but showing sequential softening as competitors including BYD (17.83% share) continue to close the gap.
Globally, CATL held a 38% battery market share in 2024, up from 36% in 2023, driven by energy storage system growth and automotive diversification. The China EV market remains fiercely competitive: a Reuters analysis earlier this month found that sustained profitability is difficult even for leading players amid ongoing price pressure.
CATL’s overseas manufacturing expansion, the Hungary plant is part of a broader global build-out, is both a market opportunity and a geopolitical risk management strategy, reducing exposure to potential tariffs on Chinese-manufactured battery exports to Europe.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
