Kuaishou, a Beijing-based technology company, is trying to raise as much as $ 6.2 billion in a stock market listing in Hong Kong, according to details of the planned IPO shared with CNN Business by a source familiar with the business.
The company, whose name means “fast hand” in Chinese, plans to issue around 365 million shares priced between 105 and 115 Hong Kong dollars ($ 13.55 and $ 14.84). At the top of that range, it would raise 42 billion Hong Kong dollars, or $ 5.4 billion. The issuance of more shares in an excess allotment option could raise its profit to $ 6.2 billion.
This puts Kuaishou on track to become the biggest IPO since Saudi Aramco broke records with an increase of almost $ 30 billion in December 2019, according to data provider Refinitiv. It would also be the largest technology IPO in the world since Uber (UBER) raised more than $ 8 billion in May 2019, according to data from Refinitiv.
Kuaishou is an application where users can shoot short videos and broadcast live content. He gets most of his revenue from the live streaming business, where users can buy virtual items and present them as gifts to their favorite hosts. Live streaming transactions accounted for 84% of revenue in 2019, according to a prospectus presented to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It also makes money from online advertising.
The company expects to list its shares by the end of this week and list them on February 5.
Kuaishou did not immediately respond to a request for additional comments from CNN Business.
The company, which is supported by Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent (TCEHY), was founded 10 years ago and is one of China’s largest short-form video applications. It counted an average of 264 million daily active users during the 11 months through November, according to your prospectus.
Still, it is far from the industry leader, ByteDance. The company’s Douyin app – the Chinese version of TikTok – had more than 600 million daily users in August, according to the company.
The listing also comes at a time when Chinese technology companies face intense regulatory scrutiny in China. Alibaba, Tencent and other major Internet companies that operate popular applications and services have been warned in recent weeks about the creation of monopolies and the abuse of consumer data to make a profit.
And Jack Ma’s Ant Group, Alibaba’s financial affiliate, saw its own mega IPO being rejected by regulators at the end of last year, just days before it started trading in Shanghai and Hong Kong. It would have been the biggest share sale in history.
In his prospectus, Kuaishou mentioned “the fact that the Internet business is highly regulated in China” as a potential risk.
Ten key investors have already pledged to invest $ 2.45 billion in Kuaishou. They include Temasek, BlackRock, GIC, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Fidelity and Invesco. Business sponsors include Bank of America Securities, Morgan Stanley and China Renaissance.
The IPO would also be a big deal for Hong Kong, which spent the past year reinventing itself as a heated market for Chinese technology companies.
Since 2019, Alibaba, (NANNY) NetEase (NTES)and JD.com (JD) all had secondary listings in the Asian financial center. The city also made changes last year with the aim of attracting even more companies. The index compiler Hang Seng Indexes, for example, launched a technology index similar to that of Nasdaq to track the largest technology companies operating in the city.
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