(Yicai Global) July 24 -- China Tower Corp, the world's largest telecommunications tower group by revenue, staged a roadshow of its initial public offering in Hong Kong yesterday, with an offer range of between HKD1.26 (USD0.16)and HKD1.58 per share.

It will float a total of 43.1 billion shares to raise approximately HKD68 billion (USD8.7 billion) to become the largest IPO in the Hong Kong stock market since the  Agricultural Bank of China's listing reaped USD19 billion in July 2010, Beijing Youth Daily reported.

Joint bookrunners for the listing include China International Capital, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase. Ten cornerstone investors have subscribed its shares with a cumulative investment of USD1.42 billion, per its prospectus.

They are Chinese private equity group Hillhouse Capital, OZ Management, Darsana Capital Partners and Alibaba Group Holding's Taobao e-commerce unit, with investment of USD400 million, USD300 million, USD175 million and USD100 million, respectively.

The proceeds will go to building new sites and expanding, maintaining and upgrading auxiliary facilities and towers and premises, acquisition of tower assets and other major assets. The share offer is expected to price on August 1 with its trading debut set for Aug. 8.

The company took in operating revenue of CNY68.665 billion last year, up 23 percent on the year before and became profitable for the first time at CNY1.943 billion mainly due to the increase in the number of users, per the prospectus it submitted  to the Hong Kong bourse, that said the ranks of its users increased from 2.42 million to 2.7 million from the end of 2016 to the end of last year.

Founded in 2014, China Tower was a joint venture of China Mobile Communications, China United Network Communications Group and China Telecom set up to handle the tower assets of these top three Chinese telecom carriers. These three titans will now lease their own towers for use. China Tower has thereby become the world's largest communication tower infrastructure services provider.

Editor: Ben Armour