The company will start taking investor orders from Monday to January 29
Kuaishou Technology, ByteDance’s largest competitor in China, wants to raise as much as $ 5.4 billion in Hong Kong in the world’s largest initial internet offering since Uber Technologies Inc.
The short video launch, backed by Tencent Holdings, sells 365 million shares at HK $ 105 to HK $ 115 according to the deal acquired by Bloomberg News. The company will start taking investor orders from Monday to January 29 and will be listed on February 5th.
Kuaishou is attempting the largest internet exchange since Uber’s $ 8.1 billion US share sale in May 2019, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Chinese company’s launch will also boost the already hot capital market in Hong Kong and may become Asia’s largest since Budweiser Brewing Co., APAC’s $ 5.8 billion nearly two years ago.
Kuaishou, which in Chinese means ‘quick hand’, is one of China’s biggest internet success stories of the past decade, part of a generation of startups that thrived on support from Tencent. Along with TikTok parent ByteDance, the outfit that Su Hua put together in 2013 was a breakthrough in live streaming and bite-size video format that has since been around the world by Facebook Inc. adopted. bigger competitor, last valued at $ 180 billion.
Kuaishou’s offer attracted ten cornerstone investors, who agreed to subscribe for $ 2.45 billion worth of shares, based on the center of the marketed range. The group includes The Capital Group, Temasek Holdings Pte, GIC Pte, BlackRock Inc. and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, which show the conditions, confirming an earlier Bloomberg report. The cornerstone investors agreed to hold shares for six months in exchange for early, guaranteed allotment.
Kuaishou’s valuation could more than double after its IPO in Hong Kong. A high-value price will value the Chinese business at $ 60.9 billion, compared to the $ 28.6 billion it achieved in a round of financing last year, according to Pitchbook. Even on the low side of the range, Kuaishou will still be valued at $ 55.6 billion.
ByteDance has long been a rumored IPO candidate, but got stuck last year in the fight against a US ban on TikTok after the video service became a national security threat. The social media giant was in talks to raise $ 2 billion before listing some of its businesses in Hong Kong, Bloomberg News reported in November.
According to its prospectus, Kuaishou had approximately 262 million daily active users as of September. That’s still less than half of the 600 million on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Kuaishou’s revenue rose 49 percent to 40.7 billion yuan ($ 6.3 billion) in the first nine months of last year, after increasing monetization efforts through advertising and e-commerce. While offering free access to its main platform, the startup uses some tips that give users their favorite live streamers performing viral challenges, lip-syncing with the latest pop songs, and playing video games.
Tencent has about 21.6 percent in Kuaishou, and other supporters include venture capital firms DCM, DST Global and Sequoia Capital China, according to the prospectus. Shares in Tencent rose to 6.4% in Hong Kong early Monday, reaching an all-time high.
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corporation and China Renaissance Holdings are joint sponsors of the transaction.
(Except for the headline, this story was not processed by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)