After entering 2024, the progress of the IPO of fintech companies has once again attracted market attention. A reporter from Beijing Business Daily noted that according to the filing information disclosed by the International Cooperation Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, since 2024, a number of institutions have obtained overseas issuance and listing filings, and the listing journey has taken a step forward. These include some fintech companies and institutions that have previously submitted listing applications. Some analysts pointed out that the supervision of fintech companies has entered the stage of normalization, and the macroeconomy has shown signs of bottoming out, which has opened a new time window for the IPO of fintech companies.
Baiwang Cloud's loan business accounts for nearly 60%.
The IPO of fintech companies has shown new trends. On February 18, the International Cooperation Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a notice on the filing of the overseas issuance and listing of Lianlian Digital Technology Co., Ltd. *** hereinafter referred to as "Lianlian Digital"), and Lianlian Digital intends to issue no more than 205942000 overseas listed ordinary shares and list them on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
As a necessary part of the listing of all domestic enterprises in the overseas capital market, obtaining the record also means that the relevant institutions have obtained the "admission ticket". A reporter from Beijing Business Daily further counted and found that since 2024, a number of institutions have obtained overseas issuance and listing filings.
At the beginning of 2024, Baiwangyun, a financial and taxation company, obtained the filing of overseas issuance and listing, and then submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange again on February 9, intending to be listed on the main board of Hong Kong. Previously, Baiwangyun had submitted the form on June 28, 2023, and the prospectus showed a "invalid" status after 6 months.
In response to the current listing progress, Baiwangyun responded to a reporter from Beijing Business Daily that the invalidation of the company's prospectus is a normal mechanism in the process of Hong Kong stock companies to be listed, and the financial audit data of the company to be listed is expired, and the latest financial data needs to be supplemented, which does not affect the company's listing process, and is a normal situation in the Hong Kong stock IPO listing process. According to the Hong Kong Listing Rules, the company's financial audit data is expired, and the company can continue the listing process after supplementing the latest financial data and information within 3 months.
From the perspective of business model, Baiwang Cloud, which is based on the digital business of finance and taxation, has made significant efforts in the small and micro loan business in recent years, mainly providing marketing, diversion, risk control and other services for financial institutions through data-driven intelligent solution business. According to its updated prospectus, as of the end of September 2023, Baiwang Cloud's revenue from data-driven intelligent solutions was 26.8 billion yuan, accounting for 57 percent of the company's total revenue2%, while the proportion of financial and tax digital business is only 276%。
The development of the loan business has also dragged down the performance of Baiwang Cloud to a certain extent. According to the prospectus of Baiwangyun, in the first three quarters of 2023, Baiwangyun's operating income will be 46.8 billion yuan, with a net loss of 21.3 billion yuan, the company's gross profit margin in the same period increased from 41 in the same period last year4% to 291%。
In response to the above, Baiwang explained in the prospectus that the loss was mainly due to the huge referral fee paid to the marketer for digital precision marketing services and the staff costs used to support the platform's expanding business operations. During the reporting period, the company paid a large referral fee of 16.5 billion yuan, accounting for 49% of the company's total sales cost in the same period7%。
In response to the high referral fee, Baiwang Cloud said that the company expects to benefit from the efforts to diversify its customers, especially the user conversion of the company's other services and the word-of-mouth recommendation of existing customers, so as to reduce the dependence on marketing** and then control the expenditure of referral fees. At the same time, the value of the credit financing products facilitated by the Company continued to increase during the Track Record Period.
In addition to Baiwangyun, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a notice of filing for the overseas issuance and listing of Youxin Technology Ltd on February 7, pointing out that the company submitted overseas issuance and listing filing materials through the domestic operating entity Guangzhou Youxin Technology *** hereinafter referred to as "Youxin Technology"), and intends to issue no more than 2.3 million ordinary shares and be listed on the NASDAQ ** exchange in the United States.
Su Xiaorui, a financial technology expert, said that in recent years, various financial technology companies have continued to innovate in products, technology, and scenario applications, and a number of leading institutions have made full use of their own resource endowments to select the right track to strengthen their market competitiveness, so they have initially had the foundation for public listing. However, the submission of relevant materials is only the first step in the IPO process, and whether the listing can be completed requires a comprehensive observation of the business sustainability and compliance of the relevant company.
Compliance with the listing window is still a hard threshold.
Since 2023, the long-stagnant IPO of fintech companies has shown a warming trend, in addition to the above-mentioned institutions that have recently been recorded, there are at least 14 fintech companies such as Quantitative, Bangsheng Technology, Fendan Technology, Jiufang Fortune, Fourth Paradigm, Yuanxin Technology, etc., which have launched IPO sprints, and mainly aimed at Hong Kong stocks and the United States.
In addition to the needs of fintech companies themselves, changes in the external environment are also factors that cannot be ignored. Talking about this situation, Xue Hongyan, vice president of Xingtu Financial Research Institute, pointed out that in the past two years, due to the strict supervision of the industry and the increasing uncertainty of development prospects, the valuation of listed financial technology companies has shrunk significantly, and it is impossible to provide an effective valuation anchor for companies to be listed, resulting in a lack of willingness of companies of the same type to promote listing.
At this stage, the supervision of fintech companies has entered the stage of normalization, the uncertainty from supervision has decreased, and the macroeconomy has shown signs of bottoming out, opening a new time window for the IPO of fintech companies. Xue Hongyan added.
However, there are not a few institutions that have rushed to go public, but the only institutions that will actually complete the listing in 2023 are Jiufang Fortune and Fourth Paradigm. In front of all financial institutions, the mountain of "compliance" is still the same. In particular, institutions involved in finance-related businesses such as loans, consumer installments, and collection are facing more challenges in their listing journey.
Earlier, the quantitative faction, which was listed in the third sprint in February 2023, submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and the prospectus expired six months later. In September 2023, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) requested supplementary explanations for the filing of quantitative distribution, including the standardized operation of the loan assistance business. The contents involved include whether the loan business is a quasi-financial activity, the reasons for a large number of user complaints on its platforms such as "Yang Xiaoba", and whether it constitutes a substantial obstacle to the issuance and listing.
Regarding the current listing progress, the quantitative faction replied that the company's IPO is currently in normal progress, and there is no information that can be disclosed to the outside world for the time being, and the relevant information is subject to public information.
In the prospectus of Baiwangyun and other institutions, the risks that may arise from finance-related businesses are also mentioned. For example, Baiwang Cloud mentioned in the prospectus that data-driven intelligent solutions require access to massive amounts of data, and if data access cannot be maintained and continuously expanded, or access is restricted by new laws and regulations, or if the data is inaccurate or incomplete, it may have a material adverse impact on the company's financial condition and operating results.
Su Xiaorui bluntly said that at present, the new technology represented by "cloud and things intelligence" is in the process of deepening change, and the enabling role of financial business is becoming increasingly prominent, driving the scale of the financial technology market and business model to become more and more mature. However, as the digital transformation of the financial industry has gradually entered the deep water area, fintech has gradually shown a trend of "involution". However, it is still worth considering whether the huge R&D investment can achieve considerable output within the expected time period, and whether it really has the hard power of science and technology, has also become a constraint for fintech institutions to go public.
According to Wang Shiqiang, a senior researcher at Bingjian Technology, the domestic capital market prefers science and technology enterprises, and the listing requirements for fintech enterprises are stricter, so such institutions are more inclined to choose overseas capital markets. In addition, the current capital market as a whole is weak, the Hang Seng Index, the Shanghai Composite Index and so on are at a low point in the past decade, new listings may lead to the stock price of existing stocks to continue to decline, and the regulatory authorities are more cautious about new listings.
It is recommended to study and judge the direction of compliance.
With the recent update and listing progress of some fintech companies, whether the IPO of fintech companies can be successfully completed has once again attracted market attention. According to the statistics of the reporter of Beijing Business Daily, a total of 19 fintech concept companies are currently listed in Hong Kong, including Huifu Payment and Zhongxin Holdings, two delisted institutions, since 2022, Qifu Technology, Lufax Holdings, Jiufang Fortune, and 4Paradigm have successively completed the listing process in Hong Kong, and the first two are secondary listings.
Looking back at the development of fintech companies in the past few years, from "finance" to "digital technology" to "technology", "de-financialization" has become the consistent path of such institutions. Fintech institutions themselves focus their businesses on improving their technological strength, especially with the popularity of ChatGPT, large models and artificial intelligence have received more attention. At the same time, its business model is not limited to traditional loan and financial software service providers, but has shifted to providing more comprehensive financial information technology solutions and operational services.
A reporter from Beijing Business Daily learned from a practitioner of a financial technology company to be listed that in the process of seeking listing, the company's business is gradually weakening its financial business and moving closer to a technology company.
Xue Hongyan said that after the big waves, the existing fintech companies have basically found a profit model, and the development path is clearer. At this time, promoting IPO listing is not only necessary to optimize internal corporate governance, strengthen employee stock ownership incentives and meet the exit needs of old shareholders, but also to enhance the company's visibility and reputation to a considerable extent, and at the same time raise funds to increase investment in science and technology, so as to prepare for a new round of industry competition based on the financial model.
Beijing Business Daily reporter Liao Meng