Chinese bike-sharing giant Hello Inc said to have filed confidential filing for US IPO

Chinese bike-sharing giant Hello Inc, formerly known as Hellobike, has filed a confidential filing for a US IPO, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Hello, which is backed by Ant Group, has recently begun probing investor demand following its IPO filing. The institutions advising it are CICC, Credit Suisse, and Morgan Stanley, according to the people familiar with the matter.

The exact size of Hello's IPO has not yet been determined, although IFR reports that the company is working on a fundraising plan of up to $1 billion in size.

In January 2019, Hello co-founder and executive president Li Kaizhu said the company was valued at $5 billion and had no need or plan to raise funds in the short term, and would decide again whether to raise funds in the future based on business development.

"But certainly the company will definitely IPO, there’s just no timetable yet, and the valuation will go to ten billion dollars when it goes public," he said.

The company has made a lot of efforts in 2020 to be able to successfully go public. Although the company started as a bike-sharing business, it has launched bike-sharing and car-pooling businesses in recent years.

It is likely that the company chose to go public in the US because of the low threshold and inclusiveness of a US listing.

However, even if it can successfully go public, Hello faces considerable challenges, such as meeting government regulations. Bicycle sharing is a business that requires a scale of placement, but the common difficulty faced by several Chinese bicycle-sharing giants today is the very limited amount of placements distributed by local governments.

Hello, based in Shanghai, is one of the few startups that survived the bursting of China's billion-dollar bike-sharing bubble.

At a time when local rivals such as Ofo are suffering huge losses and exiting the industry, Hello has established itself as a one-stop mobility solutions provider, offering the masses everything from smart locks to AI-based trip planning and carpooling.