Didi Chuxing, the China-headquartered ride hailing service backed by corporates SoftBank, Apple, Alibaba, China Life, Tencent, Booking Holdings, Ping An, eHi and Sina Weibo, is considering floating in 2021, Reuters reported today.
The company is mulling Hong Kong for an initial public offering, eschewing the United States because of anti-Chinese sentiment there, according to people with knowledge of the matter.
Founded in 2012, Didi runs an on-demand ride service that is the market leader in China. Although its business was hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, its orders had recovered to more than 30 million per day by June, Reuters had reported.
The company has also spun off a bicycle rental service called Qingju and an autonomous driving technology developer, both of which have raised funding from telecommunications and internet group SoftBank, itself a significant Didi investor.
Didi is in discussions with investment banks and plans to select underwriters in the next three months, according to the sources. It is seeking a valuation of about $60bn and could launch a funding round in advance of the IPO to help hike its valuation, which is about $56bn according to recent private market trades.
Automotive manufacturer Toyota provided Didi’s last funding, investing $600m in July 2019 to take its total debt and equity financing to $18.3bn, a year after online travel booking service Booking Holdings had supplied $500m.
Other investors in Didi include China Merchants Bank, Bank of Communications, Mubadala Investment Company, Silver Lake Kraftwerk, DST Global, Matrix Partners, Tiger Global Management, New Horizon Fund, GSR Ventures, Citic PE, BlackRock, China Investment Corp, Temasek, Capital International Private Equity Fund and Coatue Management.
