JD Health, the healthcare unit of JD.com, on Sunday filed a draft prospectus for a listing in Hong Kong, making it the third affiliate of the e-commerce company looking to go public this year.
JD announced on the same day that its intends to spin off JD Health by way of a separate listing on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange. After the spin-off, JD Group will remain the largest shareholder in the company with a 81% stake through its subsidiary JD Jiankang. All the other shareholders, include private equity firms Sum Xi Holdings and Triton Bidco Limited, each own less than a 5% stake in the company.
JD Health’s core business is its retail pharmacy unit and online healthcare consulting services. The company earned revenue of RMB 8.8 billion ($1.3 billion) in the first half of this year, up 76% compared with the same year-ago period. Its revenue grew 32% year on year in 2019 and 46% annually in 2018.
The company’s main revenue sources are sales of pharmaceutical and healthcare products under JD’s direct sales model, commission and service fees from third-party merchants, as well as advertisements from suppliers and merchants, according to the prospectus.
JD Health has received with a total of $1.8 billion in funding since it was established, according to Crunchbase. The company’s latest $830 million investment was received in August from Hillhouse Capital.
The filing comes at a time of growing market interest in healthcare and biotech industries as a result of the pandemic. JD Health is competing with multiple rivals including Alibaba-backed Ali Health, Tencent-backed Wedoctor, and Pingan Good Doctor.
After a rough 2019, the e-commerce giant has been gaining momentum since the beginning of this year when e-commerce become one of the few industries which benefited from Covid-19. The company’s share prices surged more than three-fold to a historical high of $79 apiece in late August compared with around $20 at the beginning of 2019.
In addition to a Hong Kong dual listing of the core online retail business, JD’s grocery delivery unit Dada JD Daojia went public in the US in June and its fintech unit JD Digits filed for an initial public offering at Shanghai’s STAR Market in July.