Ant Group, the world’s most valuable fintech company, is making a fashionable entry into the stock market with a dual listing on the NASDAQ styled Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market and Hong Kong’s stock market on November 5. The company will be raising a record-breaking amount through the two listings which is estimated to reach $34 billion in total.
According to Ant Group’s stock exchange filing in Shanghai, the company has set a price of 68.8 yuan ($10.27) per share for 1.67 billion shares in the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market. It will raise 114.9 billion yuan ($17.15 billion) from its Shanghai leg of IPO listing, beating the $10.1 billion by Agricultural Bank of China in 2010.
Moreover, for its Hong Kong listing, the company has set a price of HK$80 ($10.32) per share for another 1.67 billion shares, according to an IPO filing by the company in the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. Ant Group, a subsidiary of the e-commerce company Alibaba, is expected to raise another $17 billion from the Hong Kong IPO listing.
Closing its total fundraising through both the IPOs at around $34 billion, the company would surpass Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion stock sale in 2019. Jack Ma told the Bund Summit in Shanghai on Saturday, “This was the first time such a big listing, the largest in human history, was priced outside New York City. We wouldn’t have dared to think about it for five years, or even three years ago.”
Ant Group’s stock sale success seems to come from its huge success in the global fintech industry. The company’s mobile payments application, Alipay, recorded 731 million users on September 30, which is miles ahead of the world’s second-largest payments platform, PayPal. The coronavirus pandemic boosted the user base of Alipay, with more users turning to digital payments for safety.
According to various sources, bank analysts are projecting Ant’s near term valuation to hover around US$320 billion to US$450 billion, making it much bigger than JP Morgan and four times larger than Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
Some big names are doing the rounds for buying a slice from Ant’s IPO sale. People familiar with the matter said that T. Rowe Price Group Inc., UBS Asset Management, FMR LLC, GIC Pte, Temasek Holdings Pte and National Council for Social Security Fund are eyeing a stake in the company through Ant’s IPO sale. The sources added that Jack Ma’s Alibaba Group will also purchase some shares in Ant Group to maintain its ownership at a 32% stake.
