TikTok's Chinese Rival Kuaishou Targets Hong Kong IPO in January - PingWest

TikTok's Chinese Rival Kuaishou Targets Hong Kong IPO in January

TikTok's Chinese Rival Kuaishou Targets Hong Kong IPO in January

4 hours ago

Beijing (PingWest)—Kuaishou, the Chinese rival of TikTok, is targeting a listing at the end of January at the earliest on the Hong Kong stock exchange, Chinese tech news outlet 36Kr reported, citing people familiar with the deal.

The application by the Tencent-backed company for an initial public offering will be heard by a listing committee in mid-January, the sources said, and if all goes well the shares could be trading by the end of January. They declined to disclose the size of the intended IPO.

Kuaishou's revenue climbed 48% to 25.3 billion yuan ($3.8 billion) in 2020’s first half. The Tencent-backed startup is angling for a valuation of $50 billion in an offering as soon as the end of this year, almost twice its current price tag, people familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified because the deal hasn’t been finalized.

The company has been increasingly expanding into advertising and e-commerce. In 2020’s first half, its revenue climbed 48% to 25.3 billion yuan ($3.8 billion). According to the IPO filing filed in Nov., its apps had 776 million average monthly active users in the first half of the year, and active users spent an average of more than 85 minutes daily on its main app.

It was previously reported that Kuaishou is expected to conduct the IPO between January 4th to 8th next year, however, as subscriptions from the secondary market exceeded expectations, the listing time has been delayed.

The IPO of the world’s second-largest video sharing platform in terms of daily average users would be one of the first of the new year by a Chinese technology group.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp. and China Renaissance Holdings Ltd. are joint sponsors of Kuaishou’s proposed IPO, according to pre-listing documents posted on the Hong Kong stock exchange’s website Thursday. Tencent has a 21.6% stake in Kuaishou, and other backers include venture capital firms DCM, DST Global and Sequoia Capital China, according to the filing. Chief Executive Officer Su Hua has 12.6%, while founder Cheng Yixiao has 10%.

ByteDance is reportedly considering listing Douyin, the sister app of TikTok, in Hong Kong in the first half of 2021. In China, Douyin has ousted Kuaishou as the No. 1 short-video app even though Kuaishou, founded in 2012, is four years older. Kuaishou surpassed 300 million daily active users in February; in August, Douyin reached 600 million daily active users.

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