Tencent’s China Literature, an Amazon-like e-book business, is continuing the trend of Asian tech IPOs after it announced its public listing in Hong Kong will raise $1.06 billion on Wednesday.
The company set the price for its 151,371,800 share offering at HK$55, the top end of its range, and it could sell an additional 22.7 million through a greenshoe option with underwriters.
The listing follows Southeast Asia-based Sea (formerly Garena), also backed by Tencent, which raised $880 million in a NYSE IPO last month, and is just ahead of gaming firm Razer, which plans to raise $550 million on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this month.
China Literature is spinning out from Tencent, which held a 62 percent share pre-listing, with plans to invest deeply in content — not only its current focus on literature, but also in anime, movies and TV shows.
Currently, its business claims 9.6 million pieces of work from 6.4 million authors. The business record a 213.5 million RMB ($32.2 million) profit for the first half of 2017, up from a 2.4 million RMB loss one year previous, according to Bloomberg.
The firm has already attracted huge interest from investors — bullish on Tencent’s involvement and the business potential — who were trading as high as $74 in the grey market ahead of the listing, Bloomberg reported.