Ant Group, the China-based financial services provider spun off by e-commerce group Alibaba, has received regulatory clearance for the Shanghai branch of its initial public offering, Reuters reported yesterday.
The approval comes after China’s Securities Regulatory Commission granted clearance for a Hong Kong offering earlier this week. The company is planning a dual listing spanning both markets and could reportedly seek $35bn in proceeds at a $250bn valuation.
Formed as Ant Financial, the financial services arm of Alibaba, Ant has since expanded to a company that oversees mobile wallet and payment platform Alipay, digital bank MyBank and credit scoring service Zhima as well as insurance, wealth management and consumer lending products.
The company intends to issue up to 1.67 billion shares on each exchange, representing a total of 11% of its enlarged shares, according to Reuters. It will hold price consultations tomorrow before setting a price early next week.
Several Ant shareholders have agreed to buy 80% of the shares through the Shanghai offering, which will take place on the Star Market.
Alibaba subsidiary Zhejiang Tmall Technology plans to acquire some 730 million shares according to a prospectus seen by Reuters, and is set to come out with a 32% stake post-IPO.
The prospective valuation would represent a large uptick from the $150bn valuation at which Ant last raised money, in a $14bn series C round in mid-2018.
The round included GIC, Temasek, Warburg Pincus, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Silver Lake, Baillie Gifford, General Atlantic, Carlyle Group, Janchor Partners, Discovery Capital Management, Primavera Capital, Khazanah Nasional and funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price.
Ant completed a $4.5bn series B round in 2016 featuring postal service China Post and insurance firms including China Life as well as Primavera Capital, China Investment Corp, China Development Bank Capital and China Construction Bank’s CCB Trust subsidiary.
The 2016 round valued Ant at about $60bn and came after China’s National Council for Social Security Fund (NCSSF) and unnamed insurance providers invested the year before through a private placement at a $50bn valuation.
NCSSF had previously joined Postal Savings Bank of China and China Development Bank to provide an undisclosed amount of funding for the company in a 2015 round valuing it at $30bn.
