How are the accounts of the Chinese Didi, ready for the IPO in New York
Didi, the leading Chinese taxi app, has made an initial public offering (IPO) in New York. Facts, numbers and comments
Didi Chuxing, the Chinese answer to Uber, has filed a listing request for the IPO on the New York lists, between Nyse or Nasdaq.
Despite tensions between the US and China, the Beijing-based company is aiming for an operation that could be among the largest in 2021.
Didi is not only known as the Chinese Uber, but actually beat Uber in the Asian country and took over its business there, Axios points out.
The popular transportation app dominates China's private racing market after beating US Uber's competition in 2016 by taking over its local assets.
On Thursday, Didi presented the IPO application to the US regulators, which values the company about 100 billion dollars. It could be even more once stock sales details are revealed.
At that valuation, Didi's listing would be the largest offering of Chinese shares in the US since Alibaba raised $ 25 billion in 2014, Reuters points out.
The listing, presented under the trade name Xiaoju Kuaizhi Inc, could be one of the largest in the world this year, aiming – according to some reports – to raise up to 10 billion.
The Wall Street operation is followed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JpMorgan.
All the details.
WHAT IS DIDI
The Didi app, available in 15 countries including Russia and Australia, was founded in 2012 by Cheng Wei, a former executive of the e-commerce giant Alibaba.
Just like Uber Technologies Inc. in the US, Didi runs a smartphone app where users can call rides, as well as regular taxis and carpooling services.
WHO BEATEN UBER IN CHINA
As we said, Didi is known for kicking Uber out of China. The competition ended in 2016 when Uber merged its Chinese unit with Didi in exchange for a stake in the Beijing-based company.
SOFTBANK, TENCENT AND UBER BEHIND THE APP
Uber currently holds a 12.8% stake in Didi, making it the company's second largest external shareholder. Didi has among its main shareholders the Japanese investment fund Softbank with 21.5%, Tencent (6.8%) and Alibaba.
ALL THE NUMBERS
The company, whose fleet includes over 15 million drivers for a total of 500 million users, aims to have 800 million monthly active users globally and to complete 100 million orders per day by 2022, including sharing orders for rides, bicycles and food delivery.
About 1.6% of the company's revenue comes from international operations, as Didi has expanded into countries like Russia and South Africa. Not only that, the company has also invested in electric vehicles and autonomous driving research.
HOW DO THE ACCOUNTS GO
The documents revealed that the Chinese company suffered a loss of 1.6 billion dollars in 2020 due to the restrictions for the Covid-19 pandemic, which broke out in China at the end of 2019.
However, in the first three months of 2021, the profit stood at 800 million. "Companies that provide similar services such as Uber and Lyft have never had profits since they went public on Wall Street," said Il Sole 24 Ore .
REGULATORY PRESSURES IN CHINA
China's transportation regulators, however, lobbied Didi to improve safety standards after two femicide cases in 2018 involving Didi drivers.
Last month, authorities summoned executives from Didi and nine other freight companies to issue alerts about their data and pricing practices. In the documents, Didi said it faced multiple risks related to its Chinese business structure.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/smartcity/didi-ipo-new-york/ on Fri, 11 Jun 2021 10:08:02 +0000.