Shares of Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd’s (騰訊) e-book arm, China Literature Ltd (閱文集團), yesterday surged more than 60 percent on their debut on the Hong Kong stock exchange, after raising US$1.1 billion in an initial public offering (IPO).
China Literature, the nation’s biggest online publishing business and Tencent’s answer to Amazon’s Kindle Store, opened at HK$90, 63.6 percent higher than its HK$55 IPO price, and shot up a further 14.3 percent to HK$102.9 in a little more than an hour of trading.
The company calls itself a “pioneer” of China’s online literature market, carrying 6.4 million writers and 9.6 million literary works.
Photo: Bloomberg
Kingston Securities executive director of researcher Dickie Wong said that investors saw a lot of potential in China Literature and its prospects for growth.
“I do see some of the authors, they can be very famous and some of their stories can become movies or soap operas and online games and cellphone games,” Wong said.
Tencent owns 62 percent of the firm, formerly known as China Reading, which was created through a merger between the Internet giant’s online literature arm and another Chinese online publisher, Shanda Cloudary (盛大Cloudary).
The demand for Internet firms is very high in the territory, Huarong International Securities (華融國際金融) analyst Jackson Wong (黃志陽) said.
“The concept that this kind of company will be the leader or changing people’s lives, I think this is creating a kind of hype,” he said, drawing parallels between Tencent’s rise and Amazon’s success.
The Shanghai-based firm is the fifth-largest IPO in the territory this year, according to Bloomberg News, as the Asian financial hub is increasingly becoming a destination for tech companies.
Popular selfie app developer Meitu Inc (美圖) debuted on the Hong Kong stock exchange in December last year after raising US$629 million in the largest IPO by a tech company in the territory in almost a decade.
Meitu targets teenagers and young adults who use the beautifying app to retouch selfie photos.
“I do think that in the future there would be more and more Internet-related companies listed in Hong Kong because they can see this time, especially with China Literature, they did quite well,” Dickie Wong said.
Video game accessories maker Razer is also looking to list in Hong Kong and is expected to raise at least US$400 million.
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to