Video-streaming platform Bilibili kicks off Hong Kong share sale as it targets up to US$3.2 billion

The Nasdaq-listed firm is marketing its retail offering at up to HK$988 per share, a 12 per cent premium to its last US closing price
Loss-making Bilibili will be the second Chinese video platform to list in Hong Kong, after Kuaishou’s US$6 billion IPO in February

IPO

Georgina Lee

Published: 9:18pm, 17 Mar 2021

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Bilibili, the Chinese video streaming platform, is seeking up to HK$24.7 billion (US$3.2 billion) in its secondary listing in Hong Kong, joining a slew of mainland companies looking to raise funds in the city.

The Shanghai-based company is selling 25 million shares, with the retail tranche priced at a maximum of HK$988 per share, a premium of about 12 per cent to its closing price of US$113.31 on Nasdaq on Tuesday. Some 97 per cent of the share sale is earmarked for institutional investors, the company said on Wednesday.

The public offer starts on Thursday and runs up to March 23. Its shares will trade on the Hong Kong bourse under the stock code “9626”. Each American depositary receipt represents one ordinary share.

Bilibili, which counts both Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings as its shareholders, said the offer price for the international tranche could be set higher than the maximum retail offer price of HK$988, but the final price depends on its US stock performance over the next week and the level of investor demand.

Rui Chen, chairman and CEO of Bilibili, is seen outside Nasdaq during the company’s initial public offering on March 28, 2018. Photo: Bloomberg

There is an overallotment option to sell up to 3.75 million more shares in case of strong investor demand.

Bilibili will be the second Chinese video platform to list in Hong Kong this quarter, after Tencent-backed Kuaishou raised over US$6 billion in its bumper IPO in February. It comes right after Chinese internet giant Baidu wrapped up its US$3.1 billion share sale on Wednesday.

Unlike Kuaishou, whose IPO was launched when market sentiment was much stronger, Bilibili’s offer coincides with a spell of weaker performance of Hong Kong stocks. The blue-chip Hang Seng Index has lost 7 per cent from a 32-month high of 31,183 reached on February 18.

Despite being unprofitable for 13 straight quarters, Bilibili’s stock in New York has surged five-fold over the past 12 months.

In the fourth-quarter results announcement, chief executive Rui Chen said as Chinese youth get hooked on to videos, the group expects to derive high growth from the so-called videolization, a term which Bilibili uses often.

Baidu’s Hong Kong secondary listing set to raise US$3.1 billion

“Benefiting from the inevitable trend of ‘videolization’, a broad audience of young users and China’s strong economic growth projections, we are in the right place at the right time to … increase our leadership in China’s large video-based market,” Chen said.

It reported monthly paying users doubled in the fourth quarter to 17.9 million from a year ago, while daily active users rose 42 per cent year on year to 54 million.

Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, UBS are the joint sponsors of the deal.

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