The government has set the price for the public offering of 1 million shares of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. stock at 855,000 yen per share, the Finance Ministry said Monday.
The NTT stock is to be listed today on markets in Japan, Europe and the United States. The price was set 3 percent below NTT's closing price of 882,000 yen on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Monday.
Shares were sold for 1.9 million yen apiece in the previous sale in 1988.
The discount price set for the book-building hearing of institutional investors was between 3 percent and 5 percent below the market price. Book-building, a process through which the offer price is based on demand for shares among institutional investors, started Dec. 1 in Japan and Nov. 30 overseas.
The survey found potential demand for 2.91 million NTT shares among individual and institutional investors against the planned 1 million shares, a ministry official said. The popularity led the government to settle on the lowest discount rate, the official said.
Revenue from the public offering of NTT shares, the fourth since the telecom giant's initial sale in 1986, will be used to redeem government bonds, the official said.
After the latest offering, the government will hold 59 percent of NTT, a former government telecommunications monopoly.