What you need to know about unicorn Ant Financial, potentially the largest IPO in history
This “ant” is about to make a really big splash.
avoid Chinese finance regulators, filed papers on Tuesday to go public in a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong.” data-reactid=”17″>Ant Financial, which rebranded itself to Ant Group in June in an apparent effort to avoid Chinese finance regulators, filed papers on Tuesday to go public in a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong.
last valued at $150 billion in 2018 after a record $14 billon funding round. Now, it is targeting a public valuation of $225 billion.
So, what exactly does Ant do, and why is it so valuable?
Alibaba took a 33% stake in Ant.
The company’s core product is Alipay, the most popular digital payments app in China that boasts a more than 50% share of China’s massive mobile payments market. Experts don’t see the mobile payment revolution withering any time soon, and Alipay is the global king in mobile payments. It also sells tech services to other Chinese financial and e-commerce businesses.
hit 1.2 billion users last year. Almost all of its growth has come in Asia, though Alipay has signed a slew of U.S. partnerships with chains like Walgreens (WBA) and Neiman Marcus to let Alipay customers from China pay with Alipay when shopping in America.
American tourists in China — before the COVID-19 pandemic put a prolonged halt to global tourism.” data-reactid=”38″>Last year, Ant opened up its app to American tourists in China — before the COVID-19 pandemic put a prolonged halt to global tourism.
Alipay users conduct more than 100 million mobile transactions on Alipay every day. The app’s biggest competitor in China is WeChat Pay, from Alibaba rival Tencent.
And then there’s Yu’ebao, which is China’s largest money-market fund, with $170 billion in assets. Ant Group owns that, too.
Airbnb, DoorDash, Snowflake, and Palantir (via directing listing) are all aiming to go public by the end of this year — but none are profitable yet.
Ant Group, in contrast, is wildly profitable. In its IPO filing, it reveals $3.2 billion of profit in the first half of 2020 ($10.5 billion in revenue), reflecting year-over-year growth of 1,000%. And that eye-popping profit came during a global virus outbreak.
—
readDanwrite.” data-reactid=”44″>Daniel Roberts is an editor-at-large at Yahoo Finance and closely covers tech. Follow him on Twitter at @readDanwrite.
Ant Financial’s core product Alipay hits the 1 billion users mark
The world’s most valuable tech unicorn is a Chinese payment company
Airbnb has been brutalized by the pandemic, but will IPO anyway in ‘forgiving’ market
Uber Eats is bigger business than Uber rides right now, but far from profitable
Etsy CEO on huge Q2: Etsy is ‘becoming much more mainstream’
Apple has less to fear from antitrust regulators than Facebook, Google, and Amazon
Facebook ad boycott is ‘more noise than fundamental risk’
Amazon tells employees to delete Tik Tok, then says email was ‘sent in error’
