China's second largest insurer Ping An Insurance (Group) will start on-line road show on Friday afternoon immediately after it announced the shares of its initial public offering (IPO) were priced at 31.8-33.8 yuan (about 4.18-4.45 U.S. dollars).

The price range is 1.5 times more than that of the IPO shares of China's first insurance stock, the China Life, and approaches the latter's opening price on its first trading day on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

A company statement said that about 1.15 billion yuan-denominated A shares would be issued in Shanghai, which would account for 15.66 percent of the insurer's expanded stock of 7.345 billion shares.

The price range which falls within the market anticipation will dilute the company's price earning ratio from 60.44-64.25 to 71.67-76.18, said the statement.

Ping An earmarked 345 million shares, or 30 percent of total shares on offer, to strategic investors. It initially set aside 287.5 million shares for fund managers and 517.5 million shares for individual investors.

Subscription by strategic investors and fund managers started on Friday while individual investors will have to wait till Monday.

The four-hour road show would begin on 14:00 on two special securities investment web sites, the www.cs.com.cn and www.p5w.net, where the Ping An Board of Directors and top management of Ping An would communicate with potential investors.

The insurer, in which the London-based HSBC Holdings PLC holds 19.9 percent stake, was already listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The IPO shares are expected to start trading on the Shanghai bourse before the Spring Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year which falls on Feb.18.

The company said the money raised through the IPO, which could be as much as 38.87 billion yuan (about 5.11 billion U.S. dollars), will be used to raise its capital fund and for businesses approved by regulators, but it didn't provide specifics.

Ping An had 16.1 percent of the country's life insurance market in 2005 and posted 5.32 billion yuan (684 million U.S. dollars) in net profits in the first three quarters of last year, up 25.77 percent from the same period a year earlier.

China Life, the first Chinese insurer which began trading in Shanghai on Jan. 9, has raised 28.32 billion yuan (3.65 billion U.S. dollars) from its initial public offering of 1.5 billion A-shares.