China's second largest ecommerce firm JD.com has filed for a listing of its shares in the US as it seeks to capitalise on soaring interest from investors in the country's ecommerce giants.
JD.com has filed for a placement of up to $1.5 billion after exponential growth last year that saw it beat its annual revenue target of !00 billion yuan (£10 billion). The firm made a profit in the 9 months to September after successive loss and is forecast to be valued at $10 billion to $13 billion.
Reuters said China's business to consumer ecommerce market is expected to hit $180 billion (£110 billion) this year. quoting figures from eMarketer. It cited growing demand from the country's middle class as well as improvements in logistics networks to cope with rising delivery volumes.
JD.com is China's second biggest ecommerce firm but is considerably smaller than Alibaba, however. It is estimated that the behemoth, founded by entrepreneur Jack Ma, controls around 80 per cent of the Chinese ecommerce market. If it floated as planned this year it would be the biggest IPO since Facebook in 2012.
JD.com, formerly known as 360buy.com, has raised $2.23 billion in the past six years from investors including the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Kingdom Holding Co, controlled by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal. Other shareholders include Tiger Global Management and DST Global Funds.
JD.com's founder and CEO Richard Lin has a 46 per cent stake in the business. It has 35.8 million active customers and processed 211.7 million orders in the nine months to September.
It has listed BofA Merrill Lynch and UBS Securities as underwriters. The Chinese firms hope to rely on a rarely used legal structure called a variable interest entity (VIE) which gives investors an economic interest but not direct ownership - bypassing Chinese government restrictions on foreign ownership in some business sectors.
No comments:
Post a Comment