Digital Q&A Platform Zhihu to List in Hong Kong on April 22
Zhihu, a leading online Q&A-based content community in China, on Monday announced its dual-primary listing plan for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEx) and a global offering of 26,000,000 Class A ordinary shares in the company at the price of HK$51.80 ($6.61) per share.
Zhihu stands to raise about HK$1.347 billion ($172 million) through the move, and its shares are expected to be listed on the HKEx Main Board on April 22.
Zhihu was established in December 2010 and listed on the NYSE in March 2021. After many rounds of financing, the company has grown from a closed community with a small number of users to the largest online Q&A community in China with a monthly active users exceeding 100 million.
According to the firm’s prospectus, in Q4 2021, Zhihu‘s average monthly active users reached 99.6 million. Additionally, average monthly visitors reached 500 million, while average monthly user interactions reached 390 million.
Zhihu‘s annual income in 2019, 2020 and 2021 was 670.5 million yuan ($105 million), 1.4 billion yuan and 3 billion yuan respectively, while net losses totaled 1 billion yuan, 517.6 million yuan and 1.3 billion yuan over the same period.
During an earnings call for its 2021 financial report, Zhou Yuan, founder, chairman and CEO of Zhihu, put forward the core strategy of “ecology first” alongside a goal of “reducing losses,” emphatically expounding upon the future layout and vision of Zhihu in vocational education. Accordingly, in March of this year, Zhihu entered the field by launching its first adult vocational education app, called “Zhixuetang” (知学堂 Zhīxuétáng).
