Chinese financial technology company Ant Group is expected to raise $34 billion U.S. when its shares begin trading in Hong Kong and Shanghai on November 5, making its initial public offering (IPO) the largest on record.
Ant Group, the parent company of the Alipay mobile payment service, priced its shares at $10.30 U.S. each, according to documents released by the Hong Kong and Shanghai stock exchanges. At that price, Ant Group would be worth $310 billion, a market value comparable to JPMorgan Chase and more than many other leading banks.
The money Ant Group raises would surpass the $29.4 billion that Saudi Arabia’s state-run oil company, Saudi Aramco, raised when it went public in 2019. Ant Group’s listing would also be larger than that of its sister company, the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which raised $25 billion when its shares started trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014.
For hundreds of millions of people in China, Alipay is their credit card, debit card, mutual fund and insurance broker — all on a single mobile platform. Alipay has more than 730 million monthly users. By comparison, PayPal has 346 million active accounts.
Last year, Ant Group earned $2.7 billion in profit on $18 billion in revenue. It says it handled $17 trillion in digital payments in mainland China during the 12 months that ended in June of this year.
Tech Insider
