Ant Group says it’s shooting for a record-breaking $30 billion IPO by October
Fintech behemoth Ant Group Co. will attempt the world’s largest ever IPO by raising $30 billion in Shanghai and Hong Kong, likely by October, Chinese media.
Ant is valued at roughly $200 billion, and will aim to sell 10% of its shares on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-like STAR board and 5% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, sources told Caixin, one of China’s most reputable and independent financial publications.
Ant affiliate Alibaba BABA, +2.72%, founded by Jack Ma, had held the record for largest IPO for years until Saudi Aramco 2222, -0.45% shattered it in December, raising $26 billion. If successful, the Ant offering would not only break that record but would become a crowning achievement in Beijing’s ongoing attempt to lure Chinese tech companies back home to domestic exchanges — a goal that has only become more acute amid increasing U.S.-China tensions.
Ant’s success has been due in large part to the massive adoption in China of its mobile-payment platform Alipay. The platform now commands a 55% share of the country’s mobile-payment market, versus rival WeChat Pay’s 39%, according to iResearch.
Ant, in comparison with WeChat, has also expanded into a more extensive range of financial services, such as consumer lending, credit ratings and insurance. And it also runs one of the world’s biggest money-market funds, Tianhong Yu’e Bao, in which nearly half of China’s population has some form of investment.
The listing also marks a milestone for Shanghai’s year-old STAR market, which Beijing has worked to shape into a Chinese Nasdaq. In fact, the tech board has surged to become one of 2020’s most lucrative IPO arenas — with its listings raising more than double the funds raised by the Shanghai exchange’s main board. The STAR’s aggregate $19 billion in IPOs this year trails only the $29 billion brought in each by the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq, according to Bloomberg data.
Thus, the estimated $20 billion portion of Ant’s anticipated dual listing raised via the STAR market could make this year’s top IPO forum not a New York or even a Hong Kong exchange, but rather a still-nascent board within the Shanghai bourse.
Aug. 5, 2020