China-based car rental service eHi Car Rental raised $120m from an initial public offering in the US yesterday, selling 10 million American depositary shares priced at $12.00 each.
Founded in 2006, eHI is one of China’s largest car services and rental businesses. According to the IPO filing, it recorded a $3.3m loss from revenues of $62m in the first half of 2014.
The company will spend $120m of the proceeds from the IPO and a concurrent $50m private placement to expand its fleet, and a further $20m on enhancing its service network.
Online travel search engine Ctrip, which led a $100m round for eHi in December 2013, bought $20m worth of shares in the IPO and will remain eHi’s largest shareholder with a 22.1% stake.
Crawford, a holding company owned by members of the Taylor family related to Enterprise Rent-A-Car founder Jack Crawford Taylor, acquired another $12m of shares and will retain a 21.1% stake.
Other notable shareholders include asset manager CDH Investments, which holds a 12.2% share post-IPO, investment firm QiMing Venture Partners, which also bought $12m of shares in the offering (11.5%), investment bank Goldman Sachs (10.2%), eHi founder and CEO Ray Ruiping Zhang (9.6%) and venture capital firm Ignition Partners.
Underwriters J.P. Morgan Securities and Goldman Sachs have the 30-day option to acquire another 1.5 million ADSs, which would lift the size of the offering to $138m.