China’s love for TikTok-Style apps generates $ 5 billion for an IPO

Focusing on the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) for over a year, Kuaishou Technology is seeking to raise nearly $ 5 billion from a stock sale in Hong Kong as short video and live broadcast apps become increasingly popular in China.

Kuaishou – rivaling ByteDance Ltd. , The Chinese competitor behind TikTok and its sister app, Douyin – received investor requests on Monday. With the bid, which could estimate it to be in excess of $ 60 billion, Kuaishou joins a series of tech companies from China that have been listed in Hong Kong.

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand” in Chinese, is backed by Tencent Holdings Ltd. It was co-founded by Su Hua and Cheng Yixiao, software engineers who previously worked for Google China and Hewlett Packard, respectively.

Both Kuaishou and ByteDance have taken advantage of the growing demand from young Chinese to watch and record short videos on their smartphones. The short video platform of the same name is the second largest in the world, according to data mentioned in the prospectus, and there were 305 million daily active users of its apps and widgets in China for nine months as of September.

With a deal size of at least $ 4.95 billion, the IPO will be the largest in the world since late 2019, when the state-controlled Saudi Arabian Oil Company, known as Aramco, was It raised $ 29.4 billion, Dealogic numbers appear.