The first Chinese internet company with a dual-primary listing in Hong Kong, Zhihu shares dropped, making it one of the worst ever secondary listing debuts in the city
Shares of Chinese question-and-answer website Zhihu (ZH: Nasdaq, 02390: HK) (Chinese: 知乎) slumped 23.58%, from its offer price of HKD 32.06 to HKD 24.5 per share after it began trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company ended the day with a total market capitalization of HKD 7.989 billion on April 22.
The company sold 26 million secondary shares and will not issue additional ones.
The trading debut came after the US Securities and Exchange Commission added the company and another 16 firms to the list of stocks potentially facing delisting in the US for not giving access to their audited accounts.
"This incident has a limited effect on Zhihu," the Q&A company said.
Zhihu's Hong Kong deal came as many US-listed Chinese firms are considering secondary or dual primary listings in Hong Kong in case US delistings are ordered.
Established in 2011 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021, Zhihu is an elite community where users publicly post questions to which others offer replies. As of 2020, more than 40 million users wrote on Zhihu, with over 44 million queries and 240 million answers on the site.