BEIJING: Changzhou Youon Public Bicycle System is set to become the first listed bike-sharing company in China following a public float that aims to raise Rmb644.4m ($96m), valuing the company at $384m. Subscriptions for the offering, worth a quarter of the company, begin on Monday. The shares are being offered at Rmb26.85 each. Bike-sharing has boomed in China, with at least 10 start-ups offering services to unlock bikes via smartphones and the biggest two Mobike and ofo, building 11m bikes between them. Not all services are a roaring success however: one company folded in June after 90 per cent of its bikes were stolen.
Youon, based in China’s Jiangsu province, said it plans to use some of the proceeds to build a new research and development centre, as well as to support daily operations and pay down debt. The company’s revenues rose by 20.5 per cent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2017 to Rmb193m, while net profit rose 7 per cent to Rmb26.9m. The platform said it had reached 7.5m users across 210 Chinese cities and counties by the end of 2016 and distributed more than 50,000 sharing-lock bicycles as of the end of March 2017. Youon’s IPO first gained regulatory approval in April but it suspended a roadshow in May due to an intellectual property rights infringement case.
