Investors in mad scramble for margin loans as US$1.12b Good Doctor IPO lights up market
IPO of China’s largest online medical services platform set to outshine ZhongAn Online’s HK$11.9b offering last September
The scorching hot IPO of Ping An Good Doctor, the first unicorn to hit Hong Kong in 2018, has sparked such massive retail fervour that brokers have so far extended more than HK$160 billion (US$20.3 billion) in margin loans to retail clients keen on getting their hands on the shares.
The margin loans extended to retail investors easily outstrips the shares on offer and has far surpassed the HK$12.5 billion extended to investors for China Literature’s IPO last November.
Good Doctor, formally known as Ping An Healthcare and Technology, aims to raise as much as HK$8.77 billion (US$1.12 billion) from the sale of just over 160 million shares.
The IPO, Hong Kong’s most valuable so far this year, is set to become the biggest flotation by an internet-based business since ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance’s HK$11.9 billion last September.
By Thursday morning, 17 brokerage firms had extended about HK$168 billion to their margin clients, more than 290 times the value of shares offered to the public, reflecting the huge gap between investor demand and supply.