PE-backed property platform Anjuke to go public in Hong Kong

The pre-IPO round was led by Country Garden Holdings, which contributed $140 million, according to the prospectus. A further $20 million came from Agile Group Holdings and the rest from unspecified investors.

Founded in 2007, Anjuke is a property information platform that achieved monetization by selling premium services to real estate agents.

58.com bought the company in 2015 for about $267 million, as part of efforts to enter new verticals. Several 58.com entities have since been spun out, including online-to-offline local services player 58 Home, C2C used car trading platform Chehaoduo, and second-hand goods marketplace Zhuan Zhuan.

For Anjuke, change came with the privatization of 58.com last year by a PE consortium at a valuation of $8.7 billion. The prospectus states that a reorganization of the business post-privatization left Anjuke clearly delineated from other 58.com divisions, making a separation logical.

58.com still owns 45.3% of Anjuke, while Tencent Holdings - a longstanding 58.com investor - has 14.1% and Jinbo Yao, chairman and CEO of 58.com has 13.5%. The PE players that backed the privatization also have significant stakes, with General Atlantic, Warburg Pincus, and Ocean Link holding 7.7%, 7.9%, and 3.9%, respectively.

Anjuke is China's largest property listing platform by average mobile monthly active users (MAUs), according to iResearch Consulting. It had a total average mobile MAUs of 67 million during the fourth quarter of 2020. The company is also China's second-largest property listings database with 194 million entries across 820 cities and counties.

Anjuke claims 726,000 agents as paying customers and a 67% share of the property advertising market. In addition, it offers software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions to property agents, helping them digitalize workflow and enhance operational efficiency. Property transaction services were added in 2019 and a brokerage SaaS platform in 2020.

Revenue grew from RMB6.22 billion ($948.6 million) in 2018 to RMB7.58 billion in 2019 to RMB8.05 billion in 2020. Net profit for those three years was RMB1.9 billion, RMB2.3 billion, and RMB1.95 billion, with net profit margins of 30.7%, 30.4%, and 24.3%.

While Anjuke targets the transaction commissions and SaaS fees, marketing services represented more than 96% of total revenue in the past three years. The company has more than 6,000 full-time employees, of which 68% work in sales and marketing.

The penetration rate of brokerage services in China’s new residential property market is expected to increase from 31.5% in 2020 to 54.2% by 2025. Online channels are becoming more dominant as both agents and developers digitalize their businesses. Other significant companies in the space include Beke and Fangdd, both of which are listed in the US.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• IPO
• Technology
• Real estate
• China
• General Atlantic
• Tencent
• Warburg Pincus Asia
• Ocean Link