Kuaishou, China’s other TikTok, files for IPO in Hong Kong
TikTok may be in choppy waters in the U.S., but its Chinese version and two major competitors are thriving and hungry for cash to expand.
Short-video app Kuaishou has filed for an IPO in Hong Kong. The filing does not include a fundraising target, but in September, Reuters reported that the company aimed “to raise up to $5 billion in a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) as early as January,” citing “people with knowledge of the matter.”
Kuaishou is probably China’s second most popular short-video app after ByteDance’s Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
- Internet giant Tencent owns a nearly 20% stake in Kuaishou.
- Tencent also owns about 18% of what is probably China’s third most popular short-video app, Bilibili.
The company’s revenues are from the sale of virtual items, games, paid livestreaming, online marketing services, and ecommerce.
- Kuaishou reported an adjusted net loss of 6.3 billion yuan ($953 million) in the first half of 2020 in its filing, based mostly on ecommerce revenues of 109.6 billion yuan ($16.58 billion).
- Kuaishou says it had an average of 302 million daily users (DAU) in the first half of 2020, and an average of 776 million users per month (MAU) during the same period.
“The timing of Kuaishou’s prospectus filing late Thursday was probably unrelated to the Ant setback,” according to Caixin. Unlike Ant, which provides financial services and faces a complicated regulatory environment, “Kuaishou, whose Chinese name means ‘fast hand’ [快手 kuàishǒu], is an online entertainment firm.”
