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Baidu becomes first technology giant to make a flat debut in Hong Kong stock market this year as investors spurn the pivot by China’s dominant search engine towards artificial intelligence
- Baidu’s shares opened with a 0.8-per cent premium to its offer price of HK$252 before ending their first day of trading unchanged
- Baidu gained as much as 1.8 per cent, and briefly fell by 0.2 per cent below its IPO price
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Baidu, China’s dominant internet search engine company, started trading in Hong Kong with less than 1 per cent premium after completing its HK$23.7 billion (US$3.05 billion) stock offering, underperforming recent big technology listings in the city.
Its shares opened for trading at HK$254, according to stock exchange data, and rose to as high as HK$256.60 before ending their first day of trading unchanged at HK$252, capitalising the Beijing-based company at HK$700 billion.
They were earlier indicated at about HK$255 in grey-market trading on Monday, according to prices quoted at Phillip Securities and Bright Smart Securities. An overnight 3.4 per cent jump to US$266.13 in the firm’s American depositary shares helped shore up the stock following a rally in tech stocks in the US.
Baidu sold 95 million shares at HK$252 each in its secondary listing, compared with its high-end marketing target of HK$295.
The performance mirrors the weak 3.5 per cent gain in JD.com secondary listing debut in the city last June, and pales in comparison to high-flying short-video app operator Kuaishou Technology, whose US$5.3 billion IPO enriched investors by 161 per cent last month.
Kuaishou’s offering generated 1,204 times in demand versus the number of shares on offer, the most sought-after retail offering in Hong Kong’s stock market history. Baidu’s deal attracted 112 times subscription.
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