Full Truck Alliance joins Didi in Chinese rush to New York IPOs

Tensions between the US and China aren’t holding back a rush of New York IPOs by Chinese firms, as Full Truck Alliance joins Didi Chuxing in listing plans

(AF) China’s Full Truck Alliance (FTA) announced on Tuesday June 15 that it plans an IPO in New York in the latest high profile US listing decision taken by a Chinese firm, following the news that Didi Chuxing will list at a value of over $70 billion.

FTA, which styles itself as “Uber for trucks” and is widely referred to as Manbang in China, is expected to sell shares that give it a value of around $20 billion. It is offering 82.5 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at between $17 and $19 per ADS. Each ADS represents 20 Class A ordinary shares in a launch that will be managed by Morgan Stanley, CICC, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Huatai, Citigroup, Nomura, China Renaissance and CSLA.

At the top end of the price range, FTA could raise as much as $1.57 billion from the IPO, which would make it the largest US listing for a Chinese company so far this year, and give the firm a total value of around $20 billion.

Chinese vaping firm RLX Technology raised $1.4 billion in its US IPO in January, but these figures are expected to be dwarfed in the coming weeks when China’s largest ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing launches its IPO, which is expected to be the biggest share sale of the year.

Didi is expected to raise around $10 billion from its New York IPO – on either Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange – and could price at a value for the firm of between $70 billion and $100 billion.

Multiple Chinese technology startups have targeted IPOs in the US in recent years, as they are attracted by superior liquidity and can avoid the tighter regulatory scrutiny seen on some major Asian exchanges like Hong Kong.

Deals in pipeline

Chinese companies raised $12 billion from US listings in 2020, nearly triple the amount raised in 2019, according to Refinitiv data, but this year is expected to far exceed that total.

Chinese companies have already raised almost $6 billion in the United States this year, with a growing number of deals in the pipeline.

FTA was formed out of a merger in 2017 between two digital freight platforms, Yunmanman and Huochebang, and is led by former Alibaba executive Peter Hui Zhang.

The company runs a mobile app that connects truck drivers to people that need to ship items within China. It was the world’s largest digital-freight platform by gross transaction value last year, according to research from China Insights Consultancy that was commissioned by the company.

In November, FTA was valued at nearly $12 billion after a $1.7 billion investment. That investment round was led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Sequoia Capital, Permira Capital and Fidelity.

China’s Tencent Holdings is also one of the company’s backers.

FTA plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “YMM”.