Two more large technology companies in China have launched initial public offerings (IPOs) to begin trading in New York.
The filings on Friday by Baidu Inc’s (百度) Netflix-style video streaming service iQiyi Inc (愛奇藝) and video site Bilibili Inc (嗶哩嗶哩) come on the heels of 21 new listings last year by Chinese companies on US exchanges.
IQiyi aims to raise as much as US$2.4 billion, offering 125 million American depositary shares at US$17 to US$19 apiece, according to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Bilibili said in its filing that it intended to raise as much as US$525 million, offering 42 million depositary shares for US$10.50 to US$12.50 each.
Chinese companies hungry for more cash for expansion have increasingly turned to US markets to sell their shares, with last year’s total being the most since 2010, data compiled by Bloomberg showed.
While investors in last year’s class have lost 11 percent on a weighted-average basis, the cadence of deals does not appear to be slowing.
Both iQiyi and Bilibili are online entertainment platforms for streaming video.
IQiyi counted 60.1 million subscribers at the end of last month, with more than 98 percent of them paying for services, its deal prospectus said.
The company has focused on producing original content such as variety shows and original dramas.
Revenue at iQiyi totaled US$2.7 billion last year with a net loss of US$574 million. It has applied to list its shares on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol IQ in a deal led by Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Credit Suisse Group AG and Bank of America Corp.
Bilibili has focused on a younger audience, with about 82 percent of its user base having been born in China from 1990 to 2009, according to QuestMobile data cited in the company’s IPO prospectus.
At the end of last year, the company had on average 71.8 million active monthly users.
Bilibili posted net revenue of US$379 million and a net loss of US$28 million last year. It has applied to list on the NASDAQ Global Select Market, under the symbol BILI. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase & Co are leading the company’s deal.
Japanese technology giant Softbank Group Corp said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia Corp, raising US$5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier. Tokyo-based Softbank said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia last month, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT. Softbank reported its profit in the April-to-September period soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about US$13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7 percent year-on-year
CRESTING WAVE: Companies are still buying in, but the shivers in the market could be the first signs that the AI wave has peaked and the collapse is upon the world Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reported a new monthly record of NT$367.47 billion (US$11.85 billion) in consolidated sales for last month thanks to global demand for artificial intelligence (AI) applications. Last month’s figure represented 16.9 percent annual growth, the slowest pace since February last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 11 percent. Cumulative sales in the first 10 months of the year grew 33.8 percent year-on-year to NT$3.13 trillion, a record for the same period in the company’s history. However, the slowing growth in monthly sales last month highlights uncertainty over the sustainability of the AI boom even as
AI BOOST: Next year, the cloud and networking product business is expected to remain a key revenue pillar for the company, Hon Hai chairman Young Liu said Manufacturing giant Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday posted its best third-quarter profit in the company’s history, backed by strong demand for artificial intelligence (AI) servers. Net profit expanded 17 percent annually to NT$57.67 billion (US$1.86 billion) from NT$44.36 billion, the company said. On a quarterly basis, net profit soared 30 percent from NT$44.36 billion, it said. Hon Hai, which is Apple Inc’s primary iPhone assembler and makes servers powered by Nvidia Corp’s AI accelerators, said earnings per share expanded to NT$4.15 from NT$3.55 a year earlier and NT$3.19 in the second quarter. Gross margin improved to 6.35 percent,
BUST FEARS: While a KMT legislator asked if an AI bubble could affect Taiwan, the DGBAS minister said the sector appears on track to continue growing The local property market has cooled down moderately following a series of credit control measures designed to contain speculation, the central bank said yesterday, while remaining tight-lipped about potential rule relaxations. Lawmakers in a meeting of the legislature’s Finance Committee voiced concerns to central bank officials that the credit control measures have adversely affected the government’s tax income and small and medium-sized property developers, with limited positive effects. Housing prices have been climbing since 2016, even when the central bank imposed its first set of control measures in 2020, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Lo Ting-wei (羅廷瑋) said. “Since the second half of
RSS