China-based ride hailing platform Didi Chuxing is set to invest $1bn in its US-based rival Uber, as part of a deal to acquire its Uber China subsidiary, the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Uber China shareholders will receive a 20% share in the merged company as part of the $35bn transaction. Didi Chuxing was valued at $28bn in its last funding round, while Uber values Uber China at $7bn.
Uber China will continue to operate under its own brand as a subsidiary of Didi Chuxing, and the transaction will bring an end to one of the fiercest battles seen in the sharing economy.
Originally known as Didi Kuaidi, Didi Chuxing was formed by the $6bn merger of China’s two largest ride ordering apps – Didi Dache and Kuaidi Dache – in February 2015, while Uber launched Uber China the same year to spearhead its push in the country, the largest market in the world.
Uber China faced an uphill battle from the start however. At the time of its merger Didi Chuxing held almost the entirety of China’s ride hailing market, and the backing of e-commerce group Alibaba and internet company Tencent enabled it to reach customers quickly and grow more smoothly.
Despite investing some $1bn in China in the space of a year, Uber China simply could not catch up, especially as Didi Chuxing continued to raise huge funds, branching out into neighbouring services like bus travel and chauffeured cars, while other startups also emerged to fight both. The deal is expected by market analysts to give the merged company a 95% share of China’s ride hailing market.
Uber China had raised at least $1.2bn from China Life, internet company Baidu, aviation and travel group HNA, carmaker Guangzhou Automobile and Citic Bank, last securing funding at a $7bn valuation. The Uber China investors will jointly take a 2.3% economic stake in Didi Chuxing, according to Bloomberg.
Didi Chuxing closed $7.3bn in financing last month, consisting of $4.5bn in equity funding from electronics producer Apple, Tencent, Alibaba and its financial services branch Ant Financial, insurance firm China Life, telecom firm SoftBank, real estate and trading company Poly Group and investment firm BlackRock, and $2.8bn in debt from China Merchants Bank and China Life.
The merger deal will make Uber the largest shareholder in Didi Chuxing, which also counts insurance firm Ping An, Singaporean state-owned fund Temasek, China Investment Corp, Capital International Private Equity Fund and Coatue Management as investors. Didi Chuxing has raised about $10.5bn in debt and equity altogether.
The Chinese company is investing the $1bn in Uber at a $68bn valuation, a source told the WSJ. Uber has now raised a total of about $13.5bn in debt and equity.
The transaction will benefit both companies as they can now concentrate on growth, rather than having to keep ploughing in capital to secure both drivers and customers in the cities in which they already operate, though scrutiny will understandably surround any attempts to cut driver pay or raise ride fees.
Significantly, the transaction comes days after the Chinese government issued ride sharing regulations, formally legalising a business model that has run into regulatory issues in several regions. The rules mandate a minimum market rate for rides, making it trickier to compete on price and essentially allowing Didi Chuxing to strangle smaller competitors by weight of marketing.
Investors have for years been betting heavily on Uber, Didi Kuaidi and a raft of regional counterparts in the hope that they can one day become the default option for taxi users. Not having to spend heavily on subsidies or worry about legal issues means China could potentially be one of the first markets where the model is profitable on a large scale.
In a wider sense however, the deal may well concern the likes of US-based Lyft, India-based Ola and Southeast Asia-focused Grab, all of which had struck strategic collaboration deals with Didi Chuxing in a bid to compete against the behemoth that is Uber. Now Uber and Didi Chuxing formally hold stakes in each other, the concern may be that those operators face being consumed or simply overwhelmed by superior resources.
Onlookers may well also wonder whether the deal is good for the sector in the long term. Much of the legal issues surrounding Uber have arisen from fears that its approach gives it an unfair advantage over the established taxi industry, and that advantage would only be heightened if one player was to hold a monopoly in those markets.
Were similar mergers to follow in other markets, state regulators would inevitably face calls to step in and prevent a monopoly being formed by a single company that could in effect balance driver payment and fee collecting however it likes. This transaction shows that although Uber may yet reach the point where it can displace the taxi industry as a whole, it will be unlikely to do so in its present form.
– Photo courtesy of Uber Technologies