JD.com’s logistics unit gets go-ahead for up to US$4 billion IPO in Hong Kong

The logistics unit of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com received the green light on Thursday to proceed with an initial public offering (IPO) that could raise between US$3 billion and US$4 billion on the Hong Kong stock exchange, according to people familiar with the matter.

The IPO would mark the latest JD arm to tap the Hong Kong markets in the past year. JD Health raised US$3.5 billion in an IPO in December and its Beijing-based parent JD.com raised US$4.5 billion in a secondary listing in Hong Kong in June 2020, the biggest fundraising in the city last year.

The JD Logistics spin-off is one of several highly anticipated offerings by China’s technology companies this year. A representative for JD.com did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday.

The potential listing, however, comes at a time when some investors have been questioning the sky-high valuations of technology companies. Video-streaming and mobile gaming site Bilibili raised US$2.6 billion in a secondary listing in Hong Kong in March, slightly below the US$2.8 billion it had targeted. Baidu, the Chinese search engine and artificial intelligence giant, flopped on its first day of trading after raising US$3.1 billion in a secondary listing in the city last month.

It also comes as Chinese regulators are clamping down on the country’s big technology firms and their ubiquitous role in the lives of mainlanders, extending from shopping to payments to financial services. Alibaba Group Holding, the world’s largest e-commerce company and a JD.com rival, was fined 18.2 billion yuan (US$2.8 billion) this month following a months-long antimonopoly investigation. Alibaba is the owner of the Post.

Ant Group, the operator of mobile payments platform Alipay and an Alibaba affiliate, agreed to become a regulated financial holding company after regulators mapped out a blueprint overhauling the planet’s biggest financial technology company.

On Thursday, China’s top financial regulators summoned 13 technology leaders that run online financial businesses, including Tencent Holdings, JD.com and Tik Tok-owner ByteDance, to a meeting and told them to undertake efforts to end anticompetitive behaviour and halt “the disorderly expansion of capital”.