Pre-IPO Buzz | Valued at $400B, Tiktok owner ByteDance Aiming for Hong Kong IPO
Julie Gao, a senior partner at Skadden LLP, will serve as CFO in an internal letter sent to ByteDance by Liang Rubo on March 25.
Julie Gao has provided legal services for more than 100 Chinese companies going public and financing projects in the US, including $MEITUAN-W (03690.HK)$ , $JD.com (JD.US)$ , $PDD Holdings (PDD.US)$ , $XIAOMI-W (01810.HK)$ , etc.
Insiders comment on her like this: "She has deeply participated in half of the Chinese Internet listings in the United States, and knows both herself and the enemy."
"ByteDance (HK) Limited" has been renamed "Douyin Group (HK) Limited" with effect from May 6, 2022, according to the Website of the Hong Kong Companies Registry. This is exactly 10 years after its establishment on May 8, 2012.
At the same time, "Beijing ByteDance Technology Co.LTD." changed its name to "Beijing Douyin Information Service Co.LTD." on May 7. Several other ByteDance companies have also changed their names to “Douyin”.
The name change and the hiring of a new CFO, both of which foreshadowed the IPO, were hotly debated.
ByteDance, the world's most valuable unicorn, has long been seen as something of a bellwether. Its IPO process, the focus of much attention, has always been elusive.
ByteDance has been rumored about listing since 2018. At first, everyone was debating whether ByteDance should list in Hong Kong or the US.
Later, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a policy to hope more unicorns to list on the mainland. So, a mainland Chinese listing of ByteDance is also possible.
In February 2019, sources said that ByteDance may list on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Science and Technology Innovation Board, and relevant authorities have contacted the company about listing on the board. ByteDance quickly denied the story.
In October 2020, news broke that ByteDance was considering a spin-off of its “Douyin business” for a separate listing, possibly as early as the first half of 2021.
There are also reports that Byte intends to spin off the TikTok business and go public as early as September 2021.
When ByteDance's CFO Zhou Shouzi was appointed in March 2021, public speculation about an IPO was at its height.
In April of the same year, ByteDance publicly announced that there were many companies going public recently. After careful study, it was concluded that the company did not meet the requirements for listing and had no listing plan at present.
Last October, it was said that "ByteDance's IPO may be delayed until the end of 2022".Its latest valuation is more than $400 billion.
Now ByteDance is once again rumored to be going public, Mooers, what's your thoughts?
The current unfavorable market conditions are a big obstacle for ByteDance.
The Chinese Internet sector has not fully recovered from a sharp fall in March.
A total of 100 U.S. -listed Chinese stocks are down more than 50% so far this year. Hong Kong's technology and Internet sectors were among the worst hit.
Many well-known Internet companies, including Tencent, Alibaba, Meituan, JD.com, and Pinduoduo, have also struggled in the stock market.
$Qutoutiao (QTT.US)$ , which has a high overlap with Toutiao's business model, is currently trading at less than $1, down 67% this year, with a market value of only $28 million.
$Bilibili (BILI.US)$ , a Xigua video competitor, is down 59% this year and has lost nearly 80% of its market value from its peak of $40 billion.
Douyin 's direct competitor, Kuaishou, is also not doing well. Kuaishou has lost nearly $120bn from its peak since its first break on July 26 last year.
Across the world's stock markets, technology, Internet companies and unicorns are also on the decline.
$Meta Platforms (FB.US)$ , which sees TikTok as a threat, saw its market cap fall below $600 billion earlier this year. $Netflix (NFLX.US)$ and $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ 's Q1 Financial Information also seems awful.
$Sea (SE.US)$ , which has been used by investment banks in the past two years as a comparison to ByteDance, has seen its share price drop from a peak of $367 to $64. It once topped $200 billion and is now down nearly 80% to $36.1 billion.
What kind of post-IPO valuation can ByteDance achieve in the current market environment? Can it deliver the highest valuation? It's all up in the air. IPO-Buzz will take you to the story of ByteDance.
Zhang Yiming was born in 1983 in Longyan, Fujian province, China. He has been interested in computers since high school.
In 2001, he entered Nankai University and majored in microelectronics and software engineering. Liang Rubo, the current CEO of ByteDance, is his best friend at university.
After graduating from college in 2005, he and his partner failed in their first venture. In February 2006, Zhang entered the travel search website Kuxun and left in 2008 to join Microsoft.
In October 2009, Zhang started his first independent venture, the vertical real estate search engine called Jiujiu Fang , before stepping down as CEO at the end of 2011.
Zhang has long believed that when a user opens a mobile app, he should see the information he is interested in, not the fixed information he edits.
However, the function of "personalized recommendation" can be made into a perfect product, and there was no successful precedent in domestic research at that time.
In 2012, ByteDance was born. Gaoxiao Jiongtu and Neihan Duanzi have been huge successes in apple's App Store, ranking in the top 20 for a long time and accumulating hundreds of thousands of daily active users.
Toutiao was born in August of the same year.
In September 2016, ByteDance launched Douyin, ushering in the era of short video.
Today, ByteDance has 1.9 billion active users worldwide.
The renamed "Douyin CO.LTD." has 16 wholly-owned subsidiaries, from these which we can see a subsidiary of its business territory: responsible for game development and distribution of Volcanic Engine, seize the enterprise technical service cloud platform Liangzi Yuedong, office software Feishu, Zhaoxi Guangnian in the knowledge services field, Xiaohe health in the health field, etc.
The market view is that ByteDance could bundle up all of its businesses except Tiktok in a Hong Kong listing, compared with a video spin-off in late 2021.
In 2021, ByteDance underwent a major overhaul in response to multiple challenges, with many businesses downsized and people optimized.
In November 2021, ByteDance announced its latest six business units: Douyin , Dali Education , Feishu , Volcano Engine , Zhaoxi Guangnian and TikTok.
Now it seems that ByteDance may have been preparing for a subsequent IPO when the business sector was reshuffling.
Since its founding in 2012, ByteDance has raised many rounds of financing, and the top five shareholders are Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Tiger Global and SoftBank.
During those eight years, ByteDance's valuation jumped 800 times from $500 million to about $400 billion.
ByteDance's secondary market valuation has fluctuated between $360 billion and $450 billion this year, according to people familiar with the matter.
On April 16, multiple ByteDance employees confirmed that the company had initiated this year's option buyback for $142 per share, up 7.5% from $132 last year.
ByteDance does not publish complete financial information, adding to its mystique.
According to the financial data officially disclosed by ByteDance, its actual revenue in 2020 was USD 34.4 billion, up 67% year on year, gross profit increased 93% to 19.3 billion, and operating loss was 2.137 billion.
ByteDance's revenue is about half that of $TENCENT (00700.HK)$ , four times that of $KUAISHOU-W (01024.HK)$ and twice that of $Baidu (BIDU.US)$ and $MEITUAN-W (03690.HK)$ .
ByteDance 2021's total revenue was about $58 billion, up 70% year on year, according to data.
Douyin's business accounted for more than 70 percent of the revenue, with Douyin, Toutiao and Xigua Video attracting 22 billion, 6.6 billion and 1.2 billion respectively.
$ByteDance (FT0001)$
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KingNY-Life : Domestic listing? The A-share market has almost stagnated for 10 years, where there is room for development, the government has always suppressed the capital market, forced capital to flow to real estate, so that the local government can get the maximum financial benefits from the land, but now it is clear that it has been kidnapped by real estate, the local government is in a dilemma. If the capital market develops and starts a bull market, so there will be no bull market for A-shares. It turns out that it didn't end well either. Alibaba is an example. China Securities still has many problems with the US capital market...
Fivecent KingNY-Life : It's not bad to see Hong Kong at the moment
搞经济 抄底 加仓 : Yesssss. Finally it's coming
搞经济 抄底 加仓 KingNY-Life : If it weren't for the crackdown, the US harvester would have started as early as mid-2021. I never thought it would be a disaster if I ran away with this beauty. Thoughts ah. Anedai![[undefined]](https://static.moomoo.com/nnq/emoji/static/image/default/default-black.png?imageMogr2/thumbnail/36x36 "undefined")
![[undefined]](https://static.moomoo.com/nnq/emoji/static/image/default/default-black.png?imageMogr2/thumbnail/36x36 "undefined")
KingNY-Life 搞经济 抄底 加仓 : Nor can it be suppressed for 10 years. Maybe this can prevent Western capital from cutting leeks and prevent financial risks, but abandoning the function of capital reservoirs to prepare the market is definitely a mistake. As a result, all capital has been introduced into real estate. Now this thunder may face even greater challenges
搞经济 抄底 加仓 KingNY-Life : Wait, when you see the low point of beauty, it will be the mad bull market of A shares in Hong Kong.
John Maynard : Love you too baby girl I'm got your back from Satoshi me