China’s food delivery and restaurant review major Meituan-Dianping said it aims to raise up to $4.4 billion (roughly Rs. 31,400 crores) for its initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong.
Instead of a not-so-effective response to other recent IPOs in the city, the company is planning to go public. With the IPO, Meituan will offer 480.27 million new shares at a range of HK$60 ($7.64) to HK$72 apiece.
The company stated that they are making losses and also said that it could not guarantee profitability in future despite of having hundreds of millions of users on its platform.
Talking about the company, Meituan.com was founded in 2010 by CEO Wang Xing and was merged with comment-rating platform Dianping Holdings in 2015. The company has been backed by internet giant Tencent and provides a range of online services, including food ordering and delivery, restaurant and movie ticket booking and group-buying.
The revenue of the company is mainly generated by commissions. The company claims that it had 310 million active users and 4.4 million active merchants, with a gross transaction volume of CNY 35.7 billion ($5.5 billion) in 2017. But, unfortunately, it witnessed a loss of CNY 19 billion for last year, increased from a CNY 6 billion loss in the previous year.
A number of companies are listing themselves on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and its is witnessing a flurry of high-profile IPOs in recent years.