Weibo, China's answer to Twitter, listed its shares in Hong Kong on Wednesday. The company's secondary listing opened 6% lower in its trading debut, ending up at $32.85 per share compared to its offer price of $34.98 per share.
The company was able to raise around $385 million from its secondary listing. Meanwhile, Weibo's main listing on the NASDAQ had surged by around 4.69% in the overnight session.
Weibo, China's second-largest social media platform behind Tencent's WeChat, is the latest Chinese tech company to launch a secondary listing in Hong Kong as tensions between China and the U.S. continue to escalate. Search engine giant Baidu, e-commerce juggernaut Alibaba, its rival JD.com, and gaming business NetEase have all launched secondary listings in China.
The listing also comes as Chinese ride-hailing company Didi announced plans to delist from the New York Stock Exchange. Didi said last week that it plans to list in Hong Kong instead.
Didi's initial move to list in the United States without first fixing pressing cybersecurity risks had angered Chinese officials. According to reports, regulators urged the company's leadership to devise a strategy to delist from the U.S. owing to worries about data leaking.
Didi is China's largest ride-hailing service, with a wealth of data about travel routes and its customers in the world's largest social media market. Didi is estimated to have more than 900 million users in China, while Weibo is estimated to have around 570 million users.
Tensions between the U.S. and China, which soared during the Trump administration, are showing no signs of subsiding under U.S. President Biden. Companies with shares listed in the U.S. have found themselves in the center of the continuing trade war between the world's two largest economies.
Beijing has intensified its monitoring of China's largest corporations in recent months, with the technology sector receiving special attention.
Meanwhile, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of the United States has finalized guidelines that would allow U.S.-listed international businesses to be delisted if their auditors fail to comply with authorities' demands for information.
Chinese companies have been scrambling to look for alternative sources of capital in case tensions escalate further, and they are forced to delist from the U.S. Analysts at the China Money Network in Hong Kong said it would be a disaster if all Chinese companies are forced to delist from U.S. exchanges.
"Despite the intense competition between the two countries, they need, must, and have to be interdependent financially, economically, technologically, socially, and culturally," analysts said.
