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Tencent-backed game live-streaming site Huya seeks Nasdaq listing

Huya is China’s biggest game live-streaming platform. 

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Visitors wearing headphones play Minecraft Parkour. Photo: Bloomberg
Sarah Daiin Beijing

Huya, China’s answer to the game-streaming site Twitch, is seeking to raise as much as US$200 million in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.

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The Guangzhou-based company, which counts Tencent Holdings as a shareholder, has 86.7 million average monthly active users - about 12 times the population of Hong Kong - who spend an average of 99 minutes on the platform, a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday showed. 

Screenshots of game live-streaming platform Huya. Photo: Handout
Screenshots of game live-streaming platform Huya. Photo: Handout

Huya reported a net loss of 81 million yuan (US$12.5 million) in 2017, narrowing from a deficit of 625 million yuan a year earlier, the filing showed. The company derived most of its revenue from advertising and value-added services such as sales of virtual gifts to users, who buy them for their favourite broadcasters.

China has become the world’s largest games market in terms of revenues and gamers, according to consultancy Frost & Sullivan Research. The country had 646 million gamers as of last year and is expected to have 917 million in 2022.

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