There is only one final step to go before Ant can be officially listed on the Shanghai bourse.
Image credit: Ant Group's official website
September 18: the Shanghai Stock Exchange announced that Ant Group had been approved by the listing committee. It only took 25 days for the company from when it first filed for the prospectus to the approval from the Star Market now.
According to the prospectus, Ant Group is issuing over 10% of the total equity through the dual-listing plan on both Hong Kong and Shanghai bourses, with the offerings over 30039 million shares. Even though the valuation and the issue price are still undecided yet, the offering in this IPO is expected to be the largest one globally.
The prospectus also revealed its outstanding financial performances, with the net income posted CNY 17 billion in 2019 and 21 billion during the first half of 2020. The revenue reported CNY 73 billion, which comes from three sectors, such as digital payment and merchants services, digital financial services, and others.
During the inquiries, Ant Group answered questions about the related transactions with Alibaba and MYbank, the competition with Tencent’s WeChat, and the capital structure.
The next step for the IPO process is to be submitted to China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) to register, after which, Ant Group will officially start publicly trading.