(Yicai) Nov. 22 -- Shares of Telling Telecommunication Holding surged after the Chinese phone dealer denied that Chinese smartphone maker Honor will likely go public by way of reverse merger with Telling.

Telling [SHE: 00829] was trading up 4.8 percent at CNY12.01 (USD1.69) as of lunch break in Shenzhen today. The stock closed 6.8 percent up yesterday.

The report about Honor’s backdoor listing do not conform to facts, the Beijing-based company announced yesterday.

Telling holds a 19.4 percent stake in Shenzhen Star Alliance Information Technology Partnership, which directly holds stakes in Honor. But the proportion is unknown to the public.

Honor was initially a smartphone brand under Huawei Technologies. But in November 2020, Huawei sold Honor to a consortium of more than 30 distributors due to US curbs on the Shenzhen-based telecoms giant buying US technologies. 

Since the spin-off, various companies, agents, dealers, and other players in the smartphone supply chain invested in Honor. Rumors and reports about Honor's listing have emerged multiple times these year, but the company denied all of them.

Shareholders look forward to make Honor more public, transparent, and diversified in capital resources, George Zhao, chief executive officer of Honor, said recently when answering listing-related questions. “As the CEO, I will better support shareholders and the board in terms of strategy in this respect,” he noted, adding that no more information could be disclosed at the time.

Honor ranked first by smartphone shipments in China in the third quarter of the year, with a domestic market share of 18 percent, according to data from market researcher Techinsight. The firm sold 16 million phones globally in the period, up 145 percent from a year earlier and achieving a record global market share of 5.4 percent.

Editors: Liao Shumin, Futura Costaglione