Meituan IPO whets investors’ appetite
Meituan-Dianping, the Tencent-backed online food review and delivery company, got off to a reasonable start on its trading debut in Hong Kong, delivering some respite to a local stock market that is showing signs of strain and losing its faith in a clutch of mega tech floats.
The trading debut makes the mainland company the fourthlargest tech firm in terms of market capitalization, next only to the tech triumvirate of Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, collectively known as “BAT”.
Meituan-Dianping shares opened high at HK$72.90 ($9.29) on Thursday, more than 5.65 percent above its offering price of HK$69 and extending the performance on Wednesday when the company’s shares ended grey market trading 3.62 percent higher at HK$71.50.
The Beijing-based company ended its trading debut 5.29 percent higher at HK$72.65, after touching a low of HK$72 and briefly peaking at HK$74 in the morning session.
Meituan Chairman and CEO Wang Xing expressed his gratitude to the company’s 531,000 delivery workers who help the company establish its dominance in mainland’s $1.3 trillion food delivery and online services industry.
The serial entrepreneur who founded Meituan eight years also thanked Steve Jobs, the quintessential entrepreneur and late iconic co-founder of Apple whose creativity and innovation made it technologically possible for Meituan’s “one-stop” app that offers a broad range of local services from food delivery, restaurant reviews, group-buying deals and movie ticketing to hotel and travel bookings.
“Without the iPhone and the internet, there would be no us today,” Wang told a listing ceremony at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.
Meituan-Dianping, coupled with mainland’s news aggregator Toutiao and ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing, are seen by industry insiders and analysts as the trio of tech superstars who can take the baton from “BAT”.
The so-called “TMD” is regarded the up-and-coming standard-bearer for Chinese corporations seeking to become global players and leaders in technology.
Meituan’s trading debut, coming at a delicate time when escalating Sino-US trade tensions cast a shadow over stock market and the flagship Hang Seng Index has technically entered a bear market, turned out to contribute to one-tenth of total trading volume on the local stock market on Thursday.