Online education platform Hujiang’s Hong Kong IPO application expired: report

An application for Shanghai-based online education firm Hujiang’s initial public offering (IPO) may have expired, reported Chinese financial blog, IPO Zaozhidao, on Tuesday.

Hujiang filed the IPO application on July 3, and passed the review on the Hong Kong stock exchange post-listing hearing on Dec. 7, according to its disclosure page on the exchange’s website.

The page has not been updated since. A six-month deadline following the post-listing hearing dictates that the company’s IPO efforts will be suspended, according to IPO Zaozhidao’s report, which has been widely cited in Chinese media.

TechNode could not independently verify the six-month rule with the Hong Kong stock exchange.

Hujiang confirmed to Chinese media Tencent Tech on Tuesday that the company did adjust its Hong Kong IPO plans, but that it had not “failed to go public” as online rumors implied. The company added that it would figure out an appropriate time to go public on a suitable stock market, but did not comment on reasons for the change.

In March, the company was rumored to have laid off around 1,000 employees across business units and corporate functions. Hujiang responded (in Chinese) afterward that the company was “reorganizing and combining some of its loss-making businesses” as it looked to withstand risks and connect with capital markets.

The company said that its IPO process was still ongoing and it would go public at the right time, amid huge fluctuations in capital markets beginning the second half of last year that impacted its Hong Kong IPO efforts.

Founded in 2001, Hujiang is one of the largest online education sites in China. The company was valued at RMB 7 billion (around $103 million) after its Series D that raised RMB 1 billion in October 2015.

The company had been running with increasing deficits from 2015 to 2017, with respective net losses of RMB 280 million, RMB 422 million, and RMB 537 million, according to its prospectus.