E-commerce giant JD.com starts stock offering of its secondary listing

APD NEWS

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China's second-largest e-commerce company JD.com started stock offering of its secondary IPO in Hong Kong on Monday, with a price of no more than 236 HK dollars (30.45 U.S. dollars) per share.

JD. com, which is listed in the U.S., successfully passed a hearing by the listing committee of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (HKEX) and filed to list its shares in the HKEX on Friday.

The deal will be opened for subscription from June 8 to 11. The company plans to offer 133 million shares – representing 4.3 percent of the total shares outstanding, of which 95 percent shares are for overseas investors, while 5 percent are for investors in Hong Kong – in a bid to raise about 3.75 billion U.S. dollars.

It is also expected to offer underwriters a greenshoe, better known as "over-allotment option," which allows underwriters to oversell the offering to clients by an additional 15 percent of the offering size and is often seen as the price stabilizer of new shares. If the greenshoe is executed, the fundraising target will rise to about 4.3 billion dollars,.

The shares of JD.com's secondary listing are estimated to be priced on June 11, trading in 50 shares per round lot.

The big move on 6/18

After successfully pricing and allocating the shares to institutional investors and retail investors, JD.com will be listed on the HKEX for trading on June 18, which is the mid-year shopping feast in China that normally generates huge revenues for e-commerce players.

JD.com raised 1.78 billion U.S. dollars when it listed on the Nasdaq in New York in 2014. Its share price closed at 59.04 U.S. dollars on Friday trading, lifting its capitalization to 86.39 billion U.S. dollars.

The dual listing would help the company better compete with e-commerce rivals including Amazon and Chinese titan Alibaba, which is also a U.S.-listed company and raised a whopping 12.9 billion U.S. dollars in its secondary Hong Kong IPO last year.

(CGTN)