Kuaishou Technology, China’s biggest competitor to ByteDance, aims to raise up to $5.4 billion in Hong Kong in what will be the world’s highest initial public offering on the internet since Uber Technologies Inc.
According to data compiled by Bloomberg, Kuaishou is seeking the world’s largest internet IPO since Uber’s $8.1 billion U.S. share sale in May 2019.
The IPO of the Chinese start-up will also give Hong Kong’s already-hot capital market another boost and could become the largest in Asia since Budweiser Brewing Co. APAC’s float of $5.8 billion almost two years ago.
The outfit co-created by Su Hua in 2013, along with TikTok parent ByteDance, pioneered the live streaming and bite-sized video format that the likes of Facebook Inc. have since been embraced around the world. The imminent debut of Kuaishou will test investor appetite for its far bigger competitor, which was last estimated at $180 billion.
Tencent has about a 21.6 percent stake in Kuaishou, and the prospectus reveals that other supporters include venture capital firms DCM, DST Global and Sequoia Capital China. In early Monday trading in Hong Kong, shares in Tencent soared as much as 6.4 percent to an all-time high.