JD Technology’s listing fate becomes a guessing game amid regulatory uncertainty
- JD Technology has been trying to move more towards “technology” with less emphasis on “financial”
- Analysts say JD Technology is now back to ground zero after the IPO pullback and regulatory changes
What happens next at JD Technology, the fintech unit of one of China’s largest online shopping platforms, has become a puzzle for industry watchers after it pulled its initial public offering application from the Shanghai Stock Exchange on March 30, confirming a South China Morning Post report in early March that its listing plan had hit the buffers.
The company, previously known as JD Finance and then as JD Digits, has been trying to move more towards “technology” with less emphasis on “financial” after Beijing turned up the heat on internet-based credit services provided by Big Tech.
Just a day before it announced the IPO pullback, the company said it had completed a business restructuring to absorb the “cloud computing” and “artificial intelligence” units from parent JD.com, adding a valuation of 15.7 billion yuan (US$2.28 billion) and increasing its parent’s stakeholding to 42 per cent.
Analysts say the company faces a similar fate to that of Ant Group, the fintech giant affiliated with Alibaba Group Holding, which had to call off its IPO plan in Hong Kong and Shanghai at the last minute due to regulatory changes. JD Technology, which is now a hodgepodge of fintech, cloud and AI operations, needs a further business realignment to meet the new rules, which will then decide whether and how fast a new listing plan can be executed, according to analysts.
Liu Meng, a fintech analyst at Forrester Research, said JD.com would likely try a second time to list the unit in Shanghai “early next year”.