Bilibili, a China-based online entertainment platform backed by internet group Tencent and mobile game developer FingerFun, raised $483m when it floated in the US yesterday.
The company priced 42 million American depositary shares at $11.50 each, in the middle of its $10.50 to $12.50 range, equating to a $3.19bn market cap. Its stock opened at $9.80 yesterday on the Nasdaq Global Select Market and closed at $11.24.
Bilibili operates an online platform focused on anime, comics and gaming that incorporates vide streaming, mobile games and livestreaming. It had an average of 76 million monthly active user in the first two months of 2018.
The company recorded a $28.2m net loss in 2017 from $379m in revenue, and will put $150m of the IPO proceeds into research and development for artificial intelligence, big data and cloud technology, and $50m towards sales and marketing activities.
The offering comes after more than $510m in funding for Bilibili since the start of 2015, the company having raised $44m in series B funding from FingerFun, Qiming Venture Partners, IDG-Accel China, China Media Capital (CMC) and Huaxing Capital Partners the same year.
Tencent invested $45m in the company’s $162m series C round, also closed in 2015, investing alongside H Capital, Windforce, Lighthouse Qiming, CMC, Tiger Global Management and Venture International.
Cheerford, an investment vehicle for Legend Capital, the venture capital firm established by conglomerate Legend Holdings, and HaiTong XuYu, a subsidiary of investment bank HaiTong, were among the participants in Bilibili’s $194m series C-1 round in 2016.
Cheerford, Tencent and CMC subsequently invested approximately $100m in Bilibili in the form of a May 2017 series D round.
Legend Capital’s stake was diluted from 5.9% to 5% in the offering, and Tencent’s from 5.2% to 4.4%.
Bilibili’s chairman and CEO, Rui Chen, will remain its largest shareholder with a 45.5% stake post-IPO, and its other notable investors are founder and president Xi Yu (11.1%), CMC (10.8%), LVC Super Unicorn Fund (7.7%) and IDG-Accel (6.5%).
Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith and JP Morgan Securities are joint bookrunners for the IPO and have an option to buy another 6.3 million APSs, increasing its size to just over $555m.