By Yin Lei
The Hong Kong stock market expects to see a surge of new listings in the second half of this year, as reported by the China Securities Journal on Thursday.
For the first five months of 2018, the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX) had seen 83 successful IPOs. Another 176 applicants are currently on the waiting list, nearly twice the number of 91 for the same period last year.
With the completion of the listing reforms this April, many high-tech firms in the Chinese mainland are turning their eyes to HKEX as a venue to float their shares.
Among them are household names in China, such as the smartphone producer Xiaomi, the car-hailing service Didi, the hotpot chain Haidilao, and the online payment giant Ant Financial.
HKEX’s listing reforms extended a welcome arm to bio-tech and high-tech firms as well as dual listing deals. Notably, firms with a weighted voting rights (WVR) ownership arrangement received a green light.
New listings at the H-share market may start to grow after August and peak in September and November, predicted Charles Li, chief executive of HKEX, early this month.
Xiaomi will be one of the many beneficiaries of HKEX’s listing reform, which had already filed its IPO application early May. Its prospectus showed that smartphones accounted for 80.4 percent, 71.3 percent, and 70.3 percent of its revenues from 2015 to 2017.
Its listing was once expected by financial regulators and investment institutions to come in mid-July.
This is only one of the possible timings and the final date has not been fixed yet, according to the latest report this afternoon by another media, the China Business Network.
The valuation of Xiaomi is estimated to be a minimum of USD 70 billion, an amount widely advocated by its sponsors, investment banks and potential investors, according to this latest report.
