Tencent-backed Beijing Kuaishou Technology is expected to start its Hong Kong public offering later this month to raise HK$38.6 billion ($5 billion), by selling shares at a maximum price of HK$93 each, banker sources told South China Morning Post.
The raised funds will "diversify the revenue streams through online games, online knowledge sharing and other products and services," according to the company's prospectus filing.
Business Times reported last week that, over the past two months, the company has conducted a pre-marketing road show before final pricing on Jan. 28 or Jan. 29 in advance of public trading starting Feb. 5, in advance of the Lunar New Year. Chinese investment bank China Renaissance, U.S. banks Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, the joint sponsors for Kuaishou's IPO, have been coordinating the road show.
This would be the first video-sharing platform to tap into the HKEX as well as the largest IPO of the past 14 months, after Alibaba Group Holding's $13 billion secondary listing in November 2019.
With 300 million daily live-streaming users, second only to Douyin's 600 million, Kuaishou's aggressive user acquisition is viewed optimistically at listing. The Tencent Investment and Yunfeng Capital Funds, co-founded by Jack Ma, have discussed with Kuaishou the acquisition of a certain number of shares.
If the IPO is successful, Kuaishou would be valued at above $50 billion, higher than its rivals, Nasdaq-listed Bilibili's $44 billion and iQIYI at $16.6 billion.
Chinese video-sharing site Bilibili reportedly plans to raise more than $2 billion through a secondary listing in Hong Kong during the first quarter of this year. ByteDance is also mulling a public listing of Douyin, the domestic version of short video app TikTok, as an independent entity in Hong Kong.
The China video-sharing market saw 818 million short video users as of last June, according to the China Netcasting Services Association. Under U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech companies, secondary listing in Hong Kong has become a popular option.
