Kuaishou Technology, the operator of China’s most popular short-video service after ByteDance Ltd.’s Douyin, jumped 194% in its Hong Kong debut after a $5.4 billion initial public offering that attracted hundreds of billions of dollars of orders.
The shares opened at HK$338, compared with the IPO price of HK$115, valuing the Tencent Holdings Ltd.-backed firm at $179 billion. The company sold about 365 million shares at the top of its price range in a deal that ranks as the world’s biggest internet IPO since Uber Technologies Inc.’s $8.1 billion U.S. share sale in May 2019.
That spectacular rise conferred on Kuaishou a price tag rivaling ByteDance, which sought funds at a $180 billion valuation. If the gains hold, that would give Kuaishou the second-best debut ever for an IPO over $1 billion in the world, data compiled by Bloomberg show. It joins an already long list of floats that have popped on their first day of trading in recent months amid a glut of liquidity and ultra-low interest rates.
Kuaishou’s coming-out party broke records in Hong Kong for the number of retail investors subscribing to its shares and the amount pledged in the process. About 1.4 million mom-and-pop investors -- one of every five people in the city -- submitted HK$1.26 trillion ($163 billion) of orders, while institutional buyers stumped up almost $200 billion.
The demand matched the frenzy for the Hong Kong leg of Ant Group Co.’s mega IPO, which drew in HK$1.3 trillion of bids for its retail tranche, before the planned $17.2 billion offering collapsed.
Founded by former Google employee Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao as an app built around sharing animated GIF images, Kuaishou pivoted to short video in 2013 and added live streaming in 2016, landing footholds in what eventually became two of the hottest social media formats in the world.
