Short Video App Kuaishou Aims for February IPO in Hong Kong: Report
Chinese short-video company Kuaishou Technology, TikTok’s competitor, is planning to go public in Hong Kong on Feb. 5 with a target valuation of $50 billion, according to Chinese media outlet 36Kr.
The Tencent-backed company is seeking to raise up to $5 billion from the public sale, Reuters reported earlier.
Kuaishou plans to launch its Hong Kong initial public offering between Jan. 4 to Jan. 8 and has received multiple subscriptions in the secondary market, 36Kr reported quoting people familiar with the matter.
The report added that among the many subscription requests from investors, some of them were “originally waiting for ByteDance to go public” but are now “ready to buy Kuaishou stock.”
Pandaily has reached out to Kuaishou for comment.
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is said to be in discussions to raise $2 billion before listing some of its businesses, including DouYin, TikTok’s Chinese version, and TouTiao, its news aggregator app, in Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg.
Kuaishou, which also operates its overseas equivalents Kwai and Zynn, is the world’s second-largest video sharing platform in terms of average daily users. In China, it has a particularly strong user base among users in lower-tier cities and rural communities.
In November, Kuaishou filed an application for its Hong Kong IPO, and preliminary listing documents showed that the app had an average of 302 million daily active users in the first six months of 2020. Active users spent an average of more than 85 minutes each day on its main app.
Access to Kuaishou is free, with revenue generated from a cut of the tips users give to their favorite live-streaming hosts. The company is also increasingly expanding into advertising and e-commerce.
In the six months ended June, Kuaishou’s loss widened to 68.09 billion yuan ($10.31 billion), from a loss of 268.7 million yuan a year earlier. Revenue for the half-year rose nearly 50% to 25.32 billion yuan.
Founded in March 2011, the platform also gained considerable popularity outside mainland China, topping Google Play and Apple App Store’s Most Downloaded lists in eight countries. It also diversified its business scope by adding film production and distribution last year.
