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Hong Kong Depository Receipts ( HDRs) of Fast Retailing, Japanese biggest clothing retailer who owns Uniqlo, are formally listed and traded on the main board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (HKEx) on Wednesday.
The HDRs were traded in board lots of 300 HDRs, each HDR will represent an ownership interest of 0.01 Fast Retailing shares listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). On Wednesday, the HDRs rose by 1.05 percent to 28.9 HK dollars in its Hong Kong trading debut.
In 2013, the sales of the company reached over 9.77 billion U.S. dollars, with the profits of 1.3 billion dollars and earnings per share, 8.7 dollars.
Fast Retailing is aspiring to increase the amount of sales to 48.8 billion dollars and become the world's No.1 clothing retailer by 2020, said Tadashi Yanai, chairman, president and CEO of the company.
As Fast Retailing's biggest brand, Uniqlo has 325 stores in Greater China (Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Taiwan) by February 2014, almost 60 percent of its overseas stores. The Japanese company is planning to expand the number of stores in Greater China to 374 by August 2014 and to 1,000 in 10 years.
According to Pan Ning, executive vice president of Fast Retailing, Greater China and Southeast Asia have become the main impetus of Uniqlo's development in the overseas market. With 260 stores, China is Uniqlo's second biggest market after Japan, and by number of stores it is the largest global clothing brand in the country ahead of H&M, Zara, and Gap.
Apart from Uniqlo, Fast Retailing has other brands like GU, theory, Comptoir des cotonniers, PRINCESSE tam.tam and J Brand.
The sole sponsor for Fast Retailing's Hong Kong listing was Morgan Stanley, which earned about 1.5 million dollars in fees, according to Fast Retailing's listing prospectus.
The Fast Retailing's shares were first listed on the Hiroshima Stock Exchange in July 1994, before moving to the Second Section of the TSE in April 1997, and subsequently progressing to the First Section of the TSE in February 1999.
Depositary receipts (DRs) are securities issued by a depositary representing underlying shares of a corporation which have been placed with the depositary or its nominated custodian.
DRs are issued to investors in the target market (the host market) where they are traded, cleared and settled in host market currency in accordance with host market procedures. One DR will represent a number of underlying shares (or a fraction of a single share), according to the DR ratio.
