Atour's successful IPO sends a positive signal to the market that the path to listing in the US continues to open up for Chinese companies.
Chinese medium-to-high-level hotel chain Atour Lifestyle Holdings Limited (Chinese: 亚朵酒店；NASDAQ:ATAT) listed on NASDAQ on 11 November. The shares rose 17.09% to close at USD 12.88 for the day.
According to the prospectus, Atour publicly offers 4.75 million shares at USD 11 per share on ADS. The investors in Atour's IPO include Bank of America Securities (Chinese: 美银证券), Citigroup(Chinese: 花旗集团), CICC(Chinese: 中金公司), CMB International Capital Corporation Limited (Chinese: 招银国际), Redbridge Securities and Tiger Securities(Chinese: 老虎证券). The well-known investment institution Snow Lake Capital participated in the IPO as a cornerstone investor.
The funds from this IPO will be used to build new hotels and upgrade existing hotel facilities, develop new products and services, enhance network technology and infrastructure, and conduct strategic transactions.
Founded in 2013, Atour is a Chinese lifestyle brand group that started with accommodation. Atour aims to deliver a humanistic, warm and enjoyable lifestyle with continuously improved quality products, services and experiences to consumers.
From a financial perspective, Atour has been profitable for the past three years, being the only hotel company in China to remain profitable for three consecutive years. According to the prospectus, from 2019 to 2021, Atour achieved revenue of CNY 1.567 billion, CNY 1.567 billion and CNY 2.148 billion, respectively; net profit of CNY 61 million, CNY 38 million and CNY 140 million.
In addition to steady growth in performance, Atour is expanding its scale. The prospectus shows that by the end of September 2022, Atour has grown to 880 hotels with 102,707 hotel rooms, doubling its size from 2019.
As of press time, Atour closed at USD 12.88 apiece, with a market cap of USD 1.68 billion.