Chinese Used Car Platform Uxin to IPO on Nasdaq

Uxin Limited, China’s leading used auto trading platform, filed for an initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking investments of up to $500 million on the Nasdaq Stock Market, and will run under the symbol of “UXIN”.

Uxin, meaning quality and trust in Chinese, was founded in September 2011 by Kun Dai, former VP of Bitauto Holdings Limited, an automobile information services and e-commerce platform listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

Its main products include the business-to-business (B2B) used auto online auction platform Uxin Auction, the business-to-consumer (B2C) second-hand auto sales platform Uxin Used Car, and the automobile financing services provider Uxin Finance.

In its prospectus submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Beijing-based company recorded a transaction volume of 634,317 cars and a gross merchandise volume (GMV) of 43.4 billion yuan in 2017, which is equivalent to more than US$6.7 billion. The two numbers rose by 68% and 67% respectively from last year.

China is currently the world’s second largest automotive market with a car parc of 186 million in 2017 and by 2023 is expected to exceed the United States who has a current car parc of 287 million, according to researches cited in the prospectus.

Growing with the number of cars is the transaction volume of used cars: the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of China’s used car transaction volume is expected to reach 19.0% between 2017 to 2022, almost doubling the CAGR for the years 2013 to 2017.

The exit winners include founder and CEO Kun Dai who owns 24.9% of the company prior to the offering, and institutional investors such as Hong Kong-based Jeneration Capital Management and affiliated entities, Baidu (Hong Kong) Limited, and Hillhouse UX Holdings Limited.