Chinese tech giant Netease announced its long-anticipated Hong Kong listing on Tuesday, offering a detailed plan for its debut on June 11.
Why it matters: Netease will be the second US-listed Chinese tech giant to launch a secondary listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, following Alibaba’s blockbuster Hong Kong listing in November.
- Netease’s deal, hailed as a homecoming, will be Hong Kong’s largest listing so far in 2020, according to Refinitiv data cited by Reuters.
- JD.com is reportedly also planning a dual listing in Hong Kong as early as June.
- Tech majors like Baidu and Ctrip are reportedly planning similar moves, according to news reports.
Details: The company will make its debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange on June 11 with the ticker “9999,” according to the company filing on Tuesday.
- Netease plans to offer a total of 171,480,000 shares in the global offering. Of the total, 5.15 million shares will be offered locally in Hong Kong and 166.33 million shares will be offered internationally.
- The public offer price will not exceed HK$126 ($16.26) per share. Reuters reported that the company is aiming to raise around $2.6 billion through the secondary listing.
- CICC, Credit Suisse, and J.P. Morgan will serve as the joint sponsors and joint global coordinators for the deal.
- The proceeds will be used for “globalization strategies and opportunities.”
Context: Netease, traded publicly on Nasdaq since June 2000, earns nearly 80% of its revenue from gaming. The Tencent rival has more than 140 mobile and PC games across various genres.
- Netease’s e-learning unit Youdao went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2019.
- Netease Cloud Music is second to leader Tencent Music in terms of user base, according to data analytics service Jiguang. Netease is planning a separate listing of its music business, which the company said had more than 800 million registered users in 2019.
- The company has a number of other businesses including private label brand e-commerce platform Netease Yanxuan, cross-border e-commerce marketplace Kaola, which it sold to Alibaba for $2 billion in September, as well as an online media outlet, an e-mail service, and others.