Source:
https://scmp.com/business/companies/article/2141501/chinese-online-medical-platform-ping-healthcare-and-technology
Business/ Companies

Chinese online medical platform Ping An Healthcare and Technology to raise US$1b from Hong Kong IPO

Company, also known as ‘Good Doctor’, will be valued at US$5.4 billion by listing

The HKEX Connect Hall at Exchange Square in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong stock exchange is pushing ahead with IPO reforms to allow weighted voting rights for technology companies. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Ping An Healthcare and Technology, China’s largest health care and online medical platform, is to raise US$1 billion from an initial public offering in Hong Kong and will be traded in early May, after it got a verbal go-ahead by the city’s bourse, sources said on Thursday.

Shenzhen-based financial conglomerate Ping An Insurance (Group) will spin off the health care and technology unit, which is also known as “Good Doctor”, for the IPO, which will value it at US$5.4 billion.

The company’s revenue rose by 240.4 per cent to 1.02 billion yuan (US$162.2 million) in the last nine months of 2017 from a year earlier. But it still lost 497.4 million yuan in the same period, after a net loss of 614.2 million yuan during the first nine month period of 2016, according to an application prospectus published on Hong Kong bourse operator Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing’s website.

The potential IPO has already attracted major shareholders, including Softbank Vision Fund, the world’s largest private equity fund, and Vision Fund Singapore SPV, both of which have a 7.41 per cent stake in Ping An Healthcare, according to the document.

The joint sponsors are Citigroup Global Markets Asia and JPMorgan Securities (Far East). Proceeds from the listing will be used for business expansion, potential acquisitions and the development of an artificial intelligence assistant and other technologies, it said.

Launched in April 2015, Ping An Healthcare offers online medical services and has 192.8 million registered users, with network coverage that includes 3,100 hospitals and 7,500 pharmacies.

It was China’s largest internet health care platform in terms of average monthly active users and daily average online consultations in 2016, according to the US consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

Frost & Sullivan has forecast China’s internet health care market to grow to 197.8 billion yuan by 2026 from 10.9 billion in 2016.

The Hong Kong stock exchange is pushing ahead with IPO reforms to allow weighted voting rights for technology companies from June, in an attempt to attract more new economy companies to list and keep its status as a global financial services leader.

Dual-class shares are favoured by founders and certain shareholders who want to retain more voting rights than other shareholders, and critics have argued that such a structure might lead to potential abuse by corporate insiders.

Ping An Healthcare’s issued share capital is split into A shares (77.2 per cent) and class B shares (22.8 per cent). But it will have only one class of ordinary shares upon the completion of its share redesignation, the application said.