Henan Billions Completes USD1.47 Billion Acquisition of Lomon

Henan Billions has successfully acquired a 100% equity stake in rival Chinese titanium dioxide producer Lomon for USD1.47 billion (RMB9 billion), the company announced late on June 5. The deal will make Henan Billions the largest TiO2 manufacturer in Asia and the fourth largest worldwide.

The company financed the deal by issuing 380 million shares through a non-public offering. The shares were valued at USD4.41 per share (RMB27 per share), raising Henan Billions a total of USD1.68 billion (RMB10.26 billion), according to the announcement.

Xu Gang, president of Henan Billions, has become the largest shareholder of the merged company, increasing his stake from 13.57% to 20.13% during the non-public offering, while vice-president Tan Ruiqing now holds 17.60% of the shares.

However, the former president and actual controller of Lomon, Li Jiaquan, did not attempt to gain control of the merged company, a move that has surprised industry analysts. His daughter, Li Ling, became the company’s third-largest shareholder during the non-public offering and now owns 13.66% of the shares.

As Henan Billions reaffirmed in its announcement, this means that no individual will be able to control the company by holding shares directly or indirectly.

This deal is a counter to the maxim that the ‘big fish eats the small fish’. By almost any measurement, Lomon has been China’s leading TiO2 producer since the company was established in 2001, and it comfortably outstripped Henan Billions in 2014 in terms of production capacity, total assets, gross revenues, and net profits.

Figure 1: Comparison of Sichuan Lomon and Henan Billions, as of 2014

In addition, Lomon has a large-scale titanium mining and processing business. In 2014, the company was estimated to control 184 million tonnes of recoverable deposits of vanadium titano-magnetite and 36.25 million tonnes of titanium concentrate ore (grade: 46.5%), and the company has a titanium concentrate ore mining and dressing capacity of over 600,000t/a.

CCM predicts that Henan Billions will be able to reduce production costs thanks to its access to these resources.

Henan Billions also disclosed in its announcement that it plans to set up a new company in the US with USD300,000 of registered capital, which will be named Billions (America) Co., Ltd. The new company will be primarily engaged in selling Henan Billions’ TR52 printing ink TiO2, which the company purchased from Huntsman for USD10 million in September 2014.

CCM will publish further updates and analysis on this story in E-Journal, our real-time intelligence service for China’s TiO2 market. You can get two months of free access to E-Journal by registering here: http://www.cnchemicals.com/Special/SPFreeTrial.aspx

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