China's Bilibili completes $483m US IPO
Bilibili, a VC-backed Chinese animation streaming platform, ended its first day of trading on NASDAQ slightly below its IPO price following a $483 million offering.
The company sold 42,000,000 American depositary shares to the public at $11.50 apiece, within an expected range of $10.50 to $12.50, according to a filing. The stock opened at $9.80 on March 28 and closed at $11.24.
None of Bilibili’s financial or strategic investors sold any shares through the IPO. Following the offering, CMC Capital Partners is the largest external shareholder with 10.5%. Loyal Valley Capital has a 7.7% stake and IDG Capital has 6.5%. Legend Capital and Qiming Venture Partners own 5% and 4.1%, respectively, and Tencent Holdings owns a further 4.4%.
Their voting power is far smaller due to a dual-class structure that favors Rui Chen, Bilibili’s chairman and CEO, and founder Yi Xu, who hold 18.3% and 11.1% of ordinary shares, respectively. The two of them control a combined 75% of the voting rights.
Founded in 2009, Bilibili is a video-sharing platform that focuses on anime, comics, and games. It enables users to submit, watch, and comment on videos in real time, with comments displayed on the screen. It claims to have about 72 million average monthly active users. More than 80% of them are so-called Generation Z – individuals born between 1990 and 2009 who are generally seen as technology savvy and keen social media participants.
Rui Chen is an angel investor in the company, while IDG Capital provided a Series A round in 2014. Qiming led a $44.2 million Series B round in January 2015, followed by IDG, CMC and Huaxing Capital Partners. Tencent came into a $161.4 million Series C round four months later, alongside H Capital, Qiming, and CMC.
In 2016, the company raised further $199.3 million as an extension of the Series C round. New backers included Legend Capital and Loyal Valley. This was followed by a $107.2 million commitment from CMC, Tencent and Legend Capital last year.
Bilibili generates revenue from mobile games, live broadcasting, and online advertising. Its revenue came to RMB2.5 billion ($395 million) in 2017, up 372% year-on-year. However, it also recorded a net loss of RMB183.8 million for 2017, compared to RMB911.5 million in 2016.
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