China-based video streaming platform developer Kuaishou Technology raised $5.4bn today in an initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that scored exits for internet groups Tencent and Baidu.
Kuaishou has built a short-form social video app with more than 300 million daily active users. Its chief rival, Douyin, is better known internationally as TikTok.
The company priced the offering last week and issued about 365 million shares priced at HK$115 ($14.83) each. Its shares leapt to HK$338m at the start of trading today and closed at HK$300.00 to give it a market cap of roughly $160bn mark.
Investment and financial services group Fidelity bought $270m of shares in the IPO while Capital Group purchased $500m, Invesco $270m and Morgan Stanley Investment Management $125m according to Nikkei, which also named GIC, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and Boyu Capital as buying investors.
Kuaishou had raised over $4.35bn in funding prior to the offering, including $10m in series B financing from Sequoia Capital China and DCM Ventures in 2014 and an undisclosed amount of series C funding from Baidu and China Media Capital two years later.
Tencent led Kuaishou’s $350m series D round in 2017 at a reported $18bn to $20bn valuation, before joining Sequoia China in a $1bn series E round the following year.
The company added $3bn in a late 2019 series F round led by a $2bn investment from Tencent and backed by Sequoia China, Boyu Capital, Temasek and Yunfeng Capital at a valuation of $28.6bn.
Tencent held a 17.4% stake pre-IPO while Baidu owned 3.8%, according to the original IPO filing. Bank of America, China Renaissance and Morgan Stanley are joint sponsors for the offering.
