More than 400,000 New Zealanders had pre-registered their interest in Mighty River Power shares by yesterday, as the Labour Party continued its criticism of the partial sell-down of the state-owned power-generation asset.
Pre-registration closes at 5pm tomorrow with State-owned Enterprises (SOE) Minister Tony Ryall urging New Zealanders keen to buy shares to go to the pre-registration website.
''Pre-registration is only for New Zealanders and it does not commit anyone to having to buy the shares.''
A New Zealander who pre-registered might get a share allocation benefit of up to 25% more shares than those who did not pre-register, he said.
Labour SOE spokesman Clayton Cosgrove said Australian investors were expecting to snap up 30% of the shares in Mighty River Power when they were floated.
The Australian Financial Review reported that the marketing of the shares to Australian buyers was in full swing and Australian and other overseas investors were set to be offered up to 30% of the shares in the $2 billion initial public offering.
''Aussie investors might be eyeing up 30% of the shares in the initial float but they will quickly hoover up more as the shares start being on-sold. In the end, the majority of the shares, and the dividends that go with them, will end up in foreign ownership,'' he said.
The Government is selling 49% of Mighty River Power and Prime Minister John Key expects 85% to 90% of the shares to remain in New Zealand. Shares in Mighty River Power are likely to cost between $2.36 and $2.75, according to estimates based on a raft of pre-marketing research reports released by major broking firms.
Research from the five firms, which are all directly involved in the partial float, was released to their clients late last week and at the weekend, mainly in hard-copy format.
The New Zealand Herald understood the broking firms were likely to have viewed a version of the investment offer document for the float that had not been signed off.
The document was not due to be made publicly available to retail investors until mid-April, when it would go to the Financial Markets Authority for approval.
What the brokers think the company was worth was likely to have a big impact on pricing as they would be involved in a book-build process used to help set the listing price.
Caution was also evident in what information has been included in the reports.
Macquarie Securities was the only firm to give a clear figure on the price per share which it put between $2.44 and $3.06, based on 1.4 billion shares being issued.
Macquarie, First New Zealand Capital and Goldman Sachs are the lead investment bankers on the deal.
Goldman Sachs did not include any clear forecasts on valuation, dividend yield or share pricing, leaving it up to its clients to work through the numbers and do the calculations.
A New Zealand Herald source said Goldman Sachs appeared to have stuck closely to the information in the investment document, providing the shortest report.
The research showed expectations for the value of Mighty River Power also vary widely.
The lowest view is held by Forsyth Barr with a range of $3.2 billion to $3.5 billion, well below the Government's own valuation of $3.91 billion.
The Goldman Sachs report stated it would value the power company at a multiple of 13.5 to 13.9 times earnings before interest and tax, putting its value about $4.78 billion based on its forecast of financial year ebit for 2014 of $349 million.
There also appeared to be consensus that the net dividend yield would be between 4% and 5% with most firms expecting Mighty River to pay out between 90% and 110% of underlying net profits.
