Part of the shares of a "leading global online car hailing platform company" will be auctioned on July 29 on the Alibaba Auction platform with a starting price of 92 million yuan.
According to the seller's operating data, the platform may be Didi Chuxing which has matching information.
The auction page shows that the subject company averaged 24.5 million daily rides and 92.53 million active users in 2018, which is in line with Didi Chuxing's previously disclosed data.
At the same time, the China Securities Journal cited sources with knowledge of the auction as saying that the subject company is indeed Didi Chuxing.
The auction imposes requirements on the qualifications of bidders: potential transferees/intended buyers must pass a qualification examination by the board of directors of the online car travel platform company, and qualified transferees/buyers cannot be competitors or competitors' affiliates of Alibaba or Tencent.
Here is the auction page, translated automatically by Google:
As the world's leading asset disposal platform, Alibaba's auction covers judicial auctions, asset auctions, garage auctions, rare auctions and mass auctions and other transaction scenarios, with the aim of empowering the asset disposal side through online auctions.
Didi Chuxing's share auction seems to imply that the company is in need of new cash.
Yesterday, a report on the chinastarmarket.cn said Didi Chuxing is in talks with investment banks to launch an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong as soon as this year.
China's ride-hailing giant Didi Chuxing said to eye HK IPO as soon as this year
Didi Chuxing is targeting a valuation of more than 600 billion Hong Kong dollars (about $80 billion) and is expected to become one of the largest IPO deals in the Hong Kong market in recent years.
According to the report, Didi's car sharing, bike sharing and finance businesses have become profitable at scale.
