Morning Report: Yet another young Chinese company has filed for a U.S. IPO.
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Pinduoduo made waves this week after aiming for a $1.63 billion IPO in the United States. The Chinese company is only three years old. Following the Pinduoduo news, two-year-old Sina-backed fintech startup Pintec also filed for a United States-based IPO, hoping to raise $70 million.
The Beijing-based startup is a technology platform that provides financial services that connect businesses to their end users. Its software covers installment loans, personal loans, SME loans, wealth management, and insurance brokerage services. One of its most popular offerings is online lending, which facilitated $2.4 billion loans for over 2.7 million unique borrowers by the end of 2017, per its filing.
Founded in 2016, Pintec recently raised a $103 million Series A led by Sina and Hong Kong-based Mandra Capital. It has over 400 employees and is profitable, generating net income of over $3 million in Q1 2018, according to its filing.
The company’s quick growth is partly attributed to its former affiliation with Jimu Holdings. The latter built a peer-to-peer lending business in 2012 and developed a series of lending and wealth management platforms in 2015. Pintec formally spinned off from Jimu at the end of 2016 but retains its financial partnership with Jimu.
Pintec’s technology is employed by several digital platforms in China like Baidu, Xiaomi, Vipshop, and Ping An Insurance. Pintec points out in the filing that by 2022 the finance market in China will grow to $3.7 trillion. How much of that market can be captured by the soon-to-be publicly listed Pintec remains to be seen.
Editorial Note: A previous version of the article stated that Pintec facilitated RMB 3.9 billion loans for over 1.1 million unique borrowers by the end of 2017. It has since been updated.
Illustration: Li-Anne Dias
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