Chinese electric vehicle maker Li Auto has priced its American depositary receipts at $11.5 each in an initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq that will raise U$1.1 billion.
Li Auto is the largest Chinese company to sell shares on US exchanges so far this year, surpassing the US$510 million raised by Kingsoft Cloud.
The company initially aimed to sell95 million American depositary receipts (ADRs) at between $8 and $10 per share. The final pricing is above this range.
The IPO values Li Auto at around $10 billion. Private equity firm Hillhouse Capital agreed to invest $300 million in the company as part of the IPO, the company said in a regulatory filing.
The IPO valuation is nearly 1.5 times higher than the company's $4.05 billion valuation following its Series D round in early July.
Nio's local rival Li Auto files for US IPO of up to $100 million
Formerly known as CHJ Automotive, five-year-old Li Auto is following its Chinese peer NIO, which went public in New York in 2018. NIO’s share price has more than tripled so far this year.
Earlier this month, Li Auto filed its first U.S. IPO prospectus with underwriters Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and UBS.
Li Auto reported no revenue in 2018 and $284 million in 2019.
In the second quarter of 2020 it reported revenue of 1.9 billion yuan ($275 million), up 128.6 percent from 851.7 million yuan ($120 million) in the first quarter of 2020.
