Video sharing app Kuaishou Technology went public on the Hong Kong stock market on Friday.
Shares of Kuaishou opened at 338 Hong Kong dollars (about 43.6 U.S. dollars) in the morning session, up significantly from its offer price of 115 Hong Kong dollars (14.8 dollars).
As the first short-video platform going public in Hong Kong, Kuaishou is expected to raise about 41.28 billion Hong Kong dollars through its initial public offering (IPO), the highest since November 2019 when Alibaba"s secondary listing topped 100 billion Hong Kong dollars.
The public offering was oversubscribed more than 1,200 times by local investors, locking up capital of about 1.28 trillion Hong Kong dollars, and nearly 40 times by international buyers.
Kuaishou is the world"s second largest short-video platform with 305 million average daily active users over the first nine months of 2020.
With a majority of revenues coming from live streaming business, the company raked in 20.3 billion yuan (about 3.14 billion U.S. dollars) in 2018, 39.1 billion yuan in 2019, and 40.7 billion yuan in the first nine months of 2020.
According to Kuaishou"s prospectus, the funds raised in the IPO will be used for incentives for users to create content in the app, development of its e-commerce marketplace, investment in technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, and possible acquisitions of businesses in social entertainment and software, among others. (1 U.S. dollar equals 7.75 HK dollars or 6.471 yuan)
