Ant Group, Alibaba’s fintech arm and China’s dominant mobile payments firm, filed for a dual listing in Hong Kong and on Shanghai’s STAR Market on Tuesday.
Ant Group could raise as much as $30 billion in the world’s largest IPO, Reuters reported.
Ant’s initial public offering would be the first simultaneous listing in Hong Kong and the year-old STAR Market, boosting Hong Kong’s status as an international IPO market and helping enhance STAR as a capital markets centre.
Ant, already the world’s most valuable unicorn – or billion-dollar unlisted tech firm – did not disclose the size, timetable or other key details of the offering in its preliminary prospectus.
Ant plans to raise more than $20 billion from the dual-listing which could take place in October, valuing the group at over $200 billion. The offering size could even reach $30 billion if market conditions allow.
That would make it the world’s biggest IPO since oil giant Saudi Aramco raised $29.4 billion last December, which surpassed the record set by China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding’s $25 billion float in 2014.
The company was valued at about $150 billion in its last funding round in 2018, which brought in big-name investors such as Temasek Holdings and Warburg Pincus.
Ant plans to use the proceeds raised to expand its user base and cross-border payments as well as enhancing its research and development capabilities.
Ant said revenue was 72.5 billion yuan ($10.5 billion) in the first half of the year, up nearly 40 percent compared to the same period in 2019. Profit rose nearly 12 times to 21.9 billion yuan in the same period.
The numbers underscore how Ant, 33 percent-owned by Alibaba and controlled by Alibaba founder Jack Ma, has remained resilient even as the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled many businesses.
Ant, based in China’s eastern city of Hangzhou, has amassed a range of financial licenses including payments, online banking, insurance and micro lending to operate in China’s vast financial market.
Its biggest and best-known business is Alipay, the largest player in China’s 430 trillion yuan ($62 trillion) third-party mobile payments market, according to market researcher Qianzhan.
Alipay had 711 million monthly active users as of June, with payment volumes reaching 118 trillion yuan ($17 trillion) in China, Ant’s filings showed.
Alibaba set up Alipay in 2004, modelling the business on U.S. peer PayPal Holdings, to help Chinese buyers shop online.
