Chinese start-up media player 36Kr files for US IPO

It follows a $24 million investment last month from a group including Nikkei. Alibaba Group subsidiary Ant Financial currently holds a 16.1% stake in the company.

Founded in 2010, 36Kr claims to have published more than 108,000 articles on technology and start-ups in China. The company also claims to have 348 million average monthly page views and more than 800,000 enterprises in its database. It was the first media outlet to report on news aggregation and short video sharing unicorn ByteDance.

36Kr has three main revenue-making businesses: online advertising, enterprise servicess and subscriptions. In 2018, these services respectively represented 58%, 34% and 8% of overall revenue. 36Kr has invested heavily this year in enterprise services such as consulting and offline events, which have now displaced online advertising as the primary revenue channel.

Revenue from enterprise services grew 509% year on year to RMB101 million ($14 million) during the first half of 2019, representing more than half of overall revenue. The number of enterprise services customers increased from 52 to 131 in the same period, while average revenue per enterprise increased from RMB319, 000 to RMB771,000.

The expansion has required significant cash burn. Operating expenses grew 193% year on year to RMB113 million in the first half of 2019, which led to a net loss of RMB45.5 million despite revenue growing 179% year on year to RMB202 million in the same period.

In 2018, the company was profitable. Revenue grew 148% during the year to RMB299 million, while net income increased by 411% to RMB40.5 million.

According to a prospectus, 36Kr will continue to prioritize enterprise services after the IPO, with 40% of the proceeds going into the expansion business services.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Media
• Early-stage
• China
• TMT
• Alibaba Group