Chinese Commodities Brokerage Yintech Debuts on Nasdaq
April 27 2016 - 11:10AM
Dow Jones News
An online-commodities brokerage based in Shanghai has listed in
the U.S., becoming one of the few Chinese technology companies to
go public in New York this year.
Yintech Investment Holdings Ltd., which provides spot
commodity-trading services to individuals trading silver, gold and
other precious metals and commodities in China, listed on Nasdaq on
Wednesday. The new offering comes as many Chinese tech companies
are planning to delist shares to seek higher valuations on China's
domestic exchanges.
The company priced at $13.50 a share late Tuesday, in the middle
of the projected offering range of $12.50 to $14.50. Yintech raised
$101 million from the initial public offering, which gave the
company a market value of $857 million.
The offering has cornerstone backing from a subsidiary of
Beijing-based, U.S.-traded Sina Corp., the operator of Internet
portal and popular microblog service Weibo.com, which has invested
$10 million. Jefferies Group LLC is handling the offering.
Yintech is only the third Chinese company to list in the U.S.
this year. In the first such IPO of 2016, immuno-oncology drug
developer BeiGene Ltd. raised $182 million on Nasdaq in February.
This was followed in March by the $110 million Nasdaq IPO of
Hutchison China MediTech Ltd., a pharmaceuticals company owned by
Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing's conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings
Ltd.
The $393 million raised by these three companies surpasses the
$349 million raised by all six Chinese companies that listed in the
U.S. in 2015, according to data provider Dealogic. More Chinese
companies listed in the U.S. have been going private and returning
to China in the hope of achieving a higher valuation by listing in
their home market, according to bankers.
A record 28 U.S.-listed Chinese companies valued at a combined
$32.7 billion announced plans to go private last year, according to
Dealogic, many of which did so with the intention of relisting in
China. But the 700-plus companies logjam for IPOs in China has
deterred some looking to raise money in the country, as has the
delay in plans to launch a new Shanghai board for fast-growing and
sometimes unprofitable technology companies.
"We did consider the domestic A-share market, but you need to
wait in a very long queue that could be as long as three to four
years," Wang Jingbo, Yintech's chief financial officer, said in an
interview. "The purpose of the IPO is to further enhance our
corporate brand and credibility."
Yintech joins a small but growing list of Chinese companies
looking to list in the U.S. Chinese logistics company ZTO Express
plans to raise between $1 billion and $2 billion later this year or
early in 2017 from an IPO in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal
previously reported.
Write to Alec Macfarlane at alec.macfarlane@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 27, 2016 10:55 ET (14:55 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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