It might be the largest IPO for a fintech company in the US stock market ever.
On October 8, Lufax filed for the IPO to SEC to be listed on New York stock exchanges with the ticker of 'LU.' Though no specific offering is disclosed in the prospectus, the IPO is expected to be the largest in US history for fintech firms, according to the rumors before of USD 2 to 3 billion.
Lufax, the first fintech arm of Ping An Group, was founded in 2011 in Shanghai. It was ranked top in the P2P market in China before it stopped the business in 2019. Now the company mainly focuses on credit services and wealth management businesses. By the end of June 2020, the credit clients reached 13.4 million, with the small to medium businesses taking up 69%. The assets per capita reached CNY 29,300. From 2017 to 2019, Lufax reported revenue of CNY 27.8 billion, 40.5 billion, and 47.8 billion, net income of CNY 6 billion, 13.6 billion, and 13.3 billion.
Prior to this IPO, Lufax closed three series of financing, with investors including LionRock, JPMorgan Securities, UBS London and China Minsheng Bank. After the C-series financing last year, the company was valued at around USD 39.4 billion.
As the first foray of Ping An Group into the fintech field, Lufax's IPO is indeed a landmark for group, showing the success of its 'Finance + Technology' strategy. Also, backed by the Ping An ecosystem, Lufax has more financial genes, which is an advantage when compared to JD Digits and Ant Group, the two other Chinese fintech companies that are also preparing for IPOs. The clients of these two firms mainly focus on the individual public and small merchants, the industrial customers respectively, while Lufax emphasizes high-net-worth clients.