Jack Ma’s Ant Group is planning to create one of the largest IPO in history. The IPO will be just behind the Alibaba and Saudi Aramco’s IPO, according to the Reuters reports.
Ant Group is best known for Alipay, one of the successful digital payment networks in China. It is seeking a market valuation of $200 billion much ahead of the financial giant Goldman Sach’s $75 billion market valuation.
Reports say that the IPO will be dual-listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai’s Star Board exchange. The group has already changed the registered name from Ant Financial Services Group to Ant Group Co. to support the duel listing.
“The innovative measures implemented by SSE STAR market and the SEHK have opened the doors for global investors to access leading edge technology companies from the most dynamic economies in the world and for those companies to have greater access to the capital markets. We are thrilled to have the opportunity to play a part in this development,” said Eric Jing, Executive Chairman of Ant Group.
Ant Group’s Financial Strength
In the fourth quarter, Ant Group generated $2 billion in profit thanks to the massive success of Alipay in China.
It is targeting the local merchants and financial firms to gain revenue in the form of tech service fees. The tech services include cloud computing, blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc.
According to the study of iResearch, Alipay (55.1%) and Tencent (38.9%) had the most mobile payment shares in December 2019.
Ant Group Has the Ambition to Serve 2 Billion Consumers
Ant Group has decided to serve 2 billion customers mainly the outside China users in the next decade, according to an interview by CNBC. As a “Unicorn” in the financial services, the Group has an eye on major international markets like Indonesia and India.
Both Alipay and WeChatPay are wildly popular cash alternatives in China and Ant Group is anticipating a great expansion of their services in other Asian regions.
It is also interesting to see that Ant Group preferred Hong Kong despite geopolitical tensions rising due to a new Chinese national security law in the city.