The half-stake is valued at HK$7.6 billion (US$974 million) at yesterday's closing price. Cable & Wireless acquired 20.2 percent of CyberWorks in August, during the sale of Cable & Wireless HKT Ltd, Hong Kong's dominant phone company. The UK-based company has since pared it's holdings in CyberWorks, which has lost 82 percent of its value in a year.
A record US$390 billion in bond, share offers and bank borrowings by phone companies last year has raised investor concern and damped appetite for phone stocks. That's led to scaling back of expansion among companies and depressed the value of phone assets making share sales difficult, analysts said.
Cable & Wireless currently owns 3.26 billion CyberWorks shares and any disposal may further erode CyberWorks' share price. Cable & Wireless said it intends to exit the investment in an "orderly manner."
CyberWorks is an Internet and telecommunications venture controlled by Richard Li, the younger son of Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing. As a condition of the HKT sale, all of Cable & Wireless' holding in CyberWorks was locked up in a three-phase plan.
The first deadline expired in September and a second one this weekend. CyberWorks has lost 57 percent of its value after Cable & Wireless sold a 4.9 percent stake on September 20. That sale gave Cable & Wireless $1.3 billion.
The UK company said that it's still in discussions about the remainder of the stake, without giving further details. It said no timetable has been set for the sale.
Cable & Wireless sold the its holdings in HKT last year as part of its plan to exit traditional phone services to homes so it can focus on providing data services to businesses.
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