IPO Public Markets

Inside Didi’s Massive IPO Filing

Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Chuxing has filed to go public in the United States.

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Didi is more or less the Uber of China. In fact, the company bought Uber’s operations in China back in 2016. And now it’s looking to go public in a deal that could value it at more than $70 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal

Backed by investors including SoftBank and Toyota, Didi last raised venture financing with a $500 million round led by SoftBank in May 2020, per Crunchbase. It also raised $1.5 billion in debt financing in April 2021.

SoftBank, Uber and Tencent are among the largest shareholders in the company, which is based in Beijing. Uber became a stakeholder in the company after selling its Chinese operations to Didi. 

Didi operates in 15 countries and has 493 million annual active users, along with 15 million annual active drivers, according to its F-1. The company reported having 41 million average daily transactions on its platform. 

In terms of numbers, the company reported $21.6 billion in revenue last year. Although that figure is down from the nearly $24.2 billion in revenue the company generated in 2019, it’s nothing to scoff at and can likely be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its losses came out to about $2.1 billion in 2020, up from about $1.25 billion in 2019. The company isn’t profitable, and has had losses every fiscal year since it was founded in 2012. 

Didi detailed how the pandemic affected its business, reporting that operations rebounded in the second half of 2020.

“The demand for our mobility offerings, as well as the supply of drivers, decreases drastically under such conditions. Our Core Platform GTV fell by 32.8% in the first quarter of 2020 as compared to the first quarter of 2019, and then by 16.0% in the second quarter of 2020 as compared to the second quarter of 2019,” the company wrote in its filing. “Our businesses resumed growth in the second half of 2020, which moderated the impact on a year-on-year basis.”

Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan are among the underwriters for the IPO.

The company applied to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker DIDI. 

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias

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