Beijing Kuaishou Technology, whose short name, Kuaishou, means "speedy hands" in Chinese, steps ahead of its competitors in setting the stage for its initial public listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Thursday, HKEX held a hearing and approved the Tencent-backed short video sharing platform's plans to publicly trade starting from Feb. 5, one week before the Chinese Lunar New Year.

The company sought to raise up to $5 billion to $6 billion in the public offerings. Tencent Holdings owns a 21.6% stake of Kuaishou.

Business Times reported on Nov. 6, 2019 that Kuaishou filed its IPO prospectus to the HKEX. The raised funds will "diversify the revenue streams through online games, online knowledge sharing and other products and services," according to the company in the prospectus filing.

Over the past two months, the company has conducted a pre-marketing road show before final pricing on Jan. 28 or 29. Kuaishou didn't disclose the exact destinations for the road show. Chinese investment bank China Renaissance, U.S. banks Morgan Stanley and Bank of America are coordinating the road show, according to a report by Tencent News.

The three companies also act as joint sponsors for Kuaishou's IPO. HSBC, Haitong International and ICBC International are joint book runners.

According to local media Beike Caijing, Kuaishou's chief financial officer Nicholas Chong has already talked to most of the funds that may be willing to serve as the cornerstone investors, including Blackstone Group. Meanwhile, Tencent Investment and Yunfeng Capital Funds, cofounded by Jack Ma, have discussed with Kuaishou the acquisition of a certain amount of shares.

The China video-sharing market saw 818 million short video users as of last June, according to the China Netcasting Services Association. Kuaishou said it has 300 million daily live-streaming users, secondary to the nearly 600 million daily users on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Suhua, Kuaishou's chief executive and founder, told Beike Caijing that he expected to see Kuaishou users increase by 20% over the following four years.  

Kuaishou's aggressive user acquisition is viewed optimistically at listing, but with free access to the platform, some local media and investors question how this nine-year-old short video platform will provide profitability.

In the first half of 2020, Kuaishou saw a net loss of 68 billion yuan ($10.53 billion) which equals average losses of nearly 373 million yuan per day. 

"Many of Kuaishou's new users have low-to-no average revenue per user," Mark Tanner, managing director at consultancy China Skinny, told South China Morning Post. "Which means that costs escalate with very little monetization."

On top of that, some investors are concerned about the company's performance under the country's overall tightening of regulations on internet companies. 

Kuaishou's live-streaming sales anchor, Xin Youzhi who has over 71 million followers, was fined $138,000 by market regulators last month for selling a counterfeit birds-nest food supplement product. Kuaishou said at the time it would suspend his account for 60 days.

Xin's live-streaming sales accounted for 10% of Kuaishou's e-commerce sales, said the company. It added that without Xin's contribution last month the company still saw revenue growth. 

The company hasn't disclosed its financial performance for the second half of 2020. 

Founded in March 2011, Kuaishou is TikTok's biggest competitor in China. It was launched as GIF Kuaishou as an animation software for users to create and share GIF pictures. It switched into a short video community in 2012 and by 2019, its daily users topped 200 million.