BEIJING - China Railway Material Company Ltd, the nation's major provider of railway material and products, has announced its plans to raise no more than 6 billion yuan ($952 million) in its Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the Shanghai and Hong Kong markets.

The State-owned heavyweight is expected to issue no more than 2.77 billion stocks for its A-share listing. If the H-share is included, the total will be no more than 3.73 billion stocks, according to the prospectus it posted on the China Securities Regulatory Commission's website on Friday evening.

The money it eyed raising was much less than the market expectation of 14.7 billion yuan, and centrally administered SOEs' averaged IPO fundraising of 18 billion yuan, which indicated the regulator's intent to prevent the sluggish market from flooding with new stocks, analysts said.

CRM is a leading supply chain provider of railway and iron and steel resources in China. In the past three years, it posted profit increase of more than 20 percent. Its sales revenue hit 200 billion yuan last year, placing the company the 430th on the Fortune 500 list.