Hunnu Coal, Seeking Funds, Studies Hong Kong Listing Next Year

April 29, 2010, 3:22 AM EDT
By Rebecca Keenan

April 29 (Bloomberg) -- Hunnu Coal Ltd., an Australian company developing coal mines in Mongolia, is studying the sale of shares in Hong Kong next year to fund new operations.

‘The plan is to dual-list it on the Hong Kong stock exchange, middle to late-next year,” Chairman Matthew Wood said today in an interview in Bloomberg’s Melbourne bureau. The company sold A$20 million ($19 million) in shares in an initial public offering and began trading in Australia in February.

Hunnu may join other Mongolia-focused mining companies including SouthGobi Energy Resources Ltd., the Canada-listed mining company backed by China’s sovereign wealth fund, and Energy Resources LLC in seeking capital by listing in Hong Kong. Coal prices doubled and shipments to China tripled last year.

“When we go to Hong Kong we’ll have numbers very similar to” the market value of SouthGobi, he said, without providing further details. SouthGobi has a market value of HK$18.78 billion ($2.4 billion), compared with Hunnu’s A$140 million.

Hunnu shares dropped 9.4 percent to 87 cents at the 4:10 p.m. Sydney time close on the exchange, following a fall of 12 percent yesterday. The decline came after Mongolia suspended the issue of mining license and barred the practice of transferring the permits as companies fail to explore for minerals.

The changes don’t affect Hunnu as it already has its licenses, Wood said “That has no bearing on anything we do.”

Hunnu is in talks with Mongolian and Chinese companies for sales agreements for production from the Unst Khudag mine, Wood said. Decisions on these accords may be reached in the next three months, he said.

SouthGobi, operating in the deserts of southern Mongolia, raised HK$3.06 billion in its share offering, according to an e- mail to fund managers on Jan. 22. The company, controlled by Vancouver-based Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., started production at its Ovoot Tolgoi mine in southern Mongolia last year and aims to use the money raised in the share sale to boost output, improve infrastructure and finance exploration.

--Editors: Keith Gosman, Indranil Ghosh
To contact the reporter on this story: Rebecca Keenan in Melbourne at rkeenan5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Hobbs at ahobbs4@bloomberg.net