
Meituan-Dianping targets $4.4b IPO, promises domestic focus
Meituan-Dianping, China’s leading online-to-offline (O2O) lifestyle services platform, is looking to raise up to HK$34.6 billion ($4.4 billion) in its Hong Kong IPO, while emphasizing that it will focus on its core domestic business rather than pushing aggressively into new geographies and verticals.
The company will sell approximately 480.3 million shares at HK$60-72 apiece, according to a filing, which would give the business a maximum value of around HK$395 billion. Five cornerstone investors – Oppenheimer Funds, Tencent Holdings, Lansdowne Partners, Darsana Fund, and China’s state-backed Structural Reform Fund – will contribute HK$11.8 billion.
The product of a 2015 merger between rival O2O players Meituan and Dianping, the company describes itself as China’s preeminent e-commerce platform for services. The business initially concentrated on group-buying services, restaurant and travel bookings, movie ticketing, and food delivery. In the last couple of years, it has added ride-hailing, bike-sharing and on-demand grocery delivery, as well as venturing overseas with investments in Indonesia’s Go-Jek and India’s Swiggy.
However, CEO Xing Wang told a press conference in Hong Kong that Meituan-Dianping would be “rooted in China and focus on the domestic market first,” Reuters reported. Huiwen Wang, a co-founder and vice president, added that the core strategy is to be a “food-plus platform.” This is reflected by changes in the IPO prospectus that indicate the company will not expand the ride-hailing service, Meituan Dache, beyond its current pilot program in Nanjing and Shanghai.
Driver subsidies in the ride-hailing business reached RMB975.9 million ($142.7 million) in the first four months of 2018, up from RMB5.4 million a year earlier. Over the same period, the acquisition of bike-sharing start-up Mobike was largely responsible for depreciation costs involving new initiatives rising from RMB17.4 million to RMB440.6 million. The company's total costs went from RMB4.74 billion to RMB11.8 billion as food delivery expenditure more than doubled. This follows a trebling in costs during 2017 to RMB21.7 billion.
Meituan-Dianping has seen a substantial increase in revenue – it came to RMB33.9 billion in 2017, up from RMB12.9 billion a year earlier, and reached RMB15.8 billion in the first four months of 2018 – but these mounting costs mean the company remains unprofitable. The net loss trebled over the course of 2017, hitting RMB18.9 billion. For the first four months of 2018, it was RMB22.8 billion.
Food delivery accounted for 62% of revenue in 2017, while 32% came from in-store vouchers, hotel reservations, and travel bookings. Meituan-Dianping claims to have the world’s largest on-demand delivery network with an average of 531,000 daily active drivers. About 2.9 billion deliveries were completed last year. The whole platform facilitated over 5.8 billion transactions totaling RMB357 billion in gross transaction volume. It served 310 million users and 4.4 million merchants nationwide.
Meituan-Dianping is listing under a weighted voting right (WVR) structure, which means the founders will retain voting control after the listing even though their combined equity interest is below 50%. Tencent and Sequoia Capital will be the largest external shareholders with 19.2% and 11.4%, respectively. Other investors include Trustbridge Partners, Coatue Management, Hillhouse Capital, and Tiger Global Management.
The company’s most recent funding round was completed in October 2017, with $4 billion raised at a valuation of $30 billion.
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