China’s Meituan Dianping files for IPO in Hong Kong

Chinese food delivery and life services platform Meituan Dianping filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong on June 25. The IPO is jointly sponsored by three Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

The company is reportedly seeking over $4 billion in the IPO, although the figure wasn’t disclosed in its filing.

Meituan Dianping operates Meituan and Dianping. Meituan is one of China’s biggest online marketplace for daily-life services while Dianping publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses and also sells coupons. The company also operates Meituan Waimai, which provides delivery services ranging from food delivery to running errands on customers’ demands.

Meituan Dianping bought bike sharing company Mobike for $2.7 billion in early April this year to draw more customers and “enhance the portfolio of services” the company offers to consumers, according to the filing.

According to Meituan Dianping, over 5.8 billion transactions were generated on its platform in 2017, totaling RMB 357 billion in gross transaction volume. The number of listed merchants of the platform increased to 5.5 million in 2017 from 3 million in 2015. The company’s revenues grew to RMB 33.9 billion in 2017 from RMB 13 billion two years ago. Despite rising revenues and an increasing customer base, the company reported a RMB 19 billion loss in 2017, and RMB 2.9 billion in adjusted net losses, in the filing.

Meituan Dianping is backed by Chinese tech giant Tencent. According to the filing, it is primarily competing with Alibaba Group and its portfolio companies for food delivery and in-store services, and with Ctrip.com, a Chinese traveling service provider.