Sino-Pakistani Tire Venture Makes Historic PSX Debut

A Sino-Pakistani joint venture tire manufacturer has made its debut on the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX), in what market participants described as the first listing by a Chinese-invested company on the country’s bourse and a significant step in deepening industrial and financial cooperation between the two nations.

Service Long March Tyres Ltd, a joint venture between Pakistan’s Servis Group and China’s Chaoyang Long March Tyre Co Ltd, was listed on the PSX on Monday. Chinese shareholders held about 43 percent of the company before the offering.

Shares of Service Long March Tyres opened at 21.95 Pakistani rupees ($0.079), 10.03 percent above the issue price of 19.95 rupees, and traded at the upper limit of the day’s price band in early trading, according to the PSX website. The strong opening reflected robust investor demand after the heavily oversubscribed offering.

The initial public offering raised 7.77 billion Pakistani rupees, making it the largest private-sector IPO in Pakistan’s capital market history. The book-building process drew bids worth 69.4 billion rupees, an oversubscription of 16.7 times, setting records for both the subscription amount and the speed of investor participation on the exchange.

The listing comes as capital market cooperation increasingly complements trade, infrastructure and industrial ties under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

You Hang, executive vice-president of the China Financial Futures Exchange and a Chinese shareholder director of the PSX, said the successful debut of Service Long March Tyres reflected the combined impact of industrial cooperation, technology transfer and capital market support between China and Pakistan.

In 2017, a Chinese-led consortium including the China Financial Futures Exchange, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange acquired a strategic stake in the PSX, helping improve corporate governance and strengthen cooperation between the two countries’ financial markets.

Proceeds from the IPO will mainly be used to finance the construction of a new passenger-car radial tire plant in Pakistan. The project, with a planned investment of about 22.56 billion rupees, is expected to begin operations in 2028 and further strengthen Pakistan’s tire industry supply chain.

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