Hong Kong has secured its second high-profile tech IPO inside a week. Following on from gaming firm Razer, which filed its prospectus on Friday, Tencent’s online publishing service has followed suit with plans for a Hong Kong IPO.
China Literature is akin to Amazon’s Kindle service, with 8.4 million pieces of content from more than five million writers. It counts 175.3 million monthly users across all services, of which more than 90 percent are on mobile.
The service is being spun out of Tencent, Asia’s highest valued tech firm, which currently owns a 65 percent share of the business. Tencent plans to sell part of its equity for the listing, but it seeking to retain at least 50 percent control as China Literature becomes a subsidiary.
The company recorded 2.6 billion RMB ($377 million) in revenue for 2016, up 59 percent year-on-year, with a profit of 38.8 million RMB, or $5.6 million, according to its filing. That’s compared to a 354 million RMB ($52 million) loss one year previous.
Tencent beefed up its online publishing focus when it merged its publishing unit with Cloudary in 2015. Cloudary had previously filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange before parent company Shanda aborted the move in favor, ultimately, of an alliance with Tencent.