resourcehouse ipo canned

Once again the Resourcehouse IPO has been cancelled.

Resourcehouse Pulls Latest Hong Kong IPO Effort .

HONG KONG?Australian billionaire Clive Palmer shelved his fourth attempt in two years to take mining company Resourcehouse Ltd. public on Hong Kong's stock exchange, saying in a statement that worsening global market conditions blocked its plan to raise as much as $3.6 billion.

The move disclosed Saturday marks a rare sour note in the hot Hong Kong IPO market. The Chinese city has been the world's No. 1 market by money raised for the past two years and is poised for another strong performance this year amid China's fast-growth and the market's considerable liquidity.

Resourcehouse's decision comes after concerns the debt problems in the euro zone and slower growth in China would take a toll on demand for commodities. But investors were also discouraged by the company's weak financials, analysts said. Resourcehouse had a net loss of 2.9 million Australian dollars ($3.1 million) in the six months ended Dec. 31, following a net loss of A$15.3 million for the year ended June 30 and a loss of A$1.7 million the previous fiscal year. According to its IPO prospectus, the company expects its net loss for the current fiscal year to be no more than A$15 million.

Resourcehouse is the biggest IPO globally to be called off so far this year, according to data provider Dealogic. The second largest pulled deal was Danish cleaning and services giant ISS A/S, which planned to raise up to 13.3 billion Danish krone (US$2.6 billion) in mid-March in the midst of global uncertainty over the nuclear crisis in Japan, sovereign debt crisis in Europe and the situation in Libya at the time.

The Brisbane-based miner had previously planned to sell 5.716 billion shares in an indicative price range of 4.48 to 4.93 Hong Kong dollars ($0.58 to $0.63) each and it was originally scheduled to price its shares Friday and list on the Hong Kong stock exchange June 10.

According to a term sheet seen by Dow Jones Newswires Friday, the company was considering a new IPO price of HK$3.45 a share, 23% below the bottom end of its indicative price range.

Resourcehouse said in the statement there was no decision to change or modify the terms of the offering, adding that Mr. Palmer and his management team are confident of the company's assets, future business strategy and opportunities. "Emerging economies like China and India will continue to be the key engine of global growth, with positive implications for the demand of thermal coal, iron ore and other natural resources. The increase in relative scarcity is driving an upward long-term trend for various commodities," Mr. Palmer said in the statement.

Saturday's statement marks the fourth time Resourcehouse has postponed or suspended plans to list in Hong Kong. Most recently, it postponed plans to raise around $3 billion in an IPO in March, after markets were roiled by the earthquake in Japan.

Resourcehouse originally planned to use a large part of the proceeds from the IPO to fund a thermal-coal project in Central Queensland and an iron-ore project in Western Australia, according to its prospectus. Both projects are scheduled to start commercial production in 2014, the company said.

Resourcehouse is the latest miner to seek a Hong Kong listing after the city's stock exchange revised its listing rules in June last year to allow mining companies that can show a "meaningful portfolio of resources" to list on the bourse, even without a net profit or cash flow.

Russian miner IRC Ltd., the iron-ore unit of Petropavlovsk PLC, was the first foreign miner to take advantage of that rule. However, it had to cut the size of its IPO from $512 million to the $240 million it raised ahead of its listing in October.