Kuaishou Chines video-sharing group world biggest IPO upto $6.3B

Kuaishou, A Chinese video-sharing group (livestreaming app and short video app) set to raise up to $6.3bn in a Hong Kong initial public offering in a test of investor appetite for China’s tech sector as it faces growing regulatory scrutiny.

The deal could value Kuaishou, which competes with ByteDance’s TikTok, at up to $61.7bn and would be the largest tech IPO since ride-hailing company Uber went to market in 2019.

The listing will raise between $4.9bn and $5.4bn, but that could rise to $6.3bn if bankers exercise an overallotment option to increase its size, according to a term sheet seen by the Financial Times. Shares are expected to price on Friday between HK$105 (US$13.55) and HK$115 (US$14.84) and begin trading on February 5.

Kuaishou which competes with ByteDance Ltd., the rival Chinese company behind TikTok and its sister app Douyin started taking investor orders Monday. With the offering, which could value it at more than $60 billion, Kuaishou is joining a string of tech companies from China that have listed in Hong Kong.

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard , respectively.

Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have capitalized on growing demand from younger Chinese people to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. Its namesake short-video platform is the world’s second-largest, according to data cited in its prospectus, and there were 305 million average daily active users of its apps and mini-programs in China for the nine months as of September.

With a minimum deal size of $4.95 billion, the IPO would be the largest in the world since late 2019, when state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Co., commonly known as Aramco, raised $29.4 billion, Dealogic figures show.