China’s Full Truck climbs in debut after $1.6 billion IPO

Full Truck Alliance Co., an Uber-like trucking startup, rose 13% in its trading debut after raising $1.6 billion in one of the year’s biggest U.S. initial public offerings by a Chinese company.

The American depositary shares, after rising as much as 20% on Tuesday, closed at $21.50, giving the company a market value of about $23.6 billion. The company backed by SoftBank Group Corp. and Tencent Holdings Ltd., sold 82.5 million shares in the IPO at the top of the marketed range of $17 to $19.

The company—known as Manbang in Chinese—was also raising $100 million each from private placements of its shares—one with the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan and the other with an entity affiliated with Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund Mubadala Investment Company PJSC, according to its filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Full Truck Alliance’s IPO rivals e-cigarette maker RLX Technology Inc.’s January listing, which raised slightly more than $1.6 billion. If its underwriters exercise a so-called greenshoe, or over-allotment option, Full Truck Alliance’s IPO could raise as much as $1.8 billion.

Full Truck Alliance, which operates a truck-sharing app connecting merchants that need shipping of their goods with truck drivers, follows a buoyant June 11 Nasdaq debut of Kanzhun Ltd., the owner of Chinese online recruitment platform Boss Zhipin.

IPO Surge

Kanzhun shares are almost double from its IPO price, underscoring a renewed appetite for listings by Chinese companies after a lull when several put their U.S. listing plans on hold in May. Companies based in China and Hong Kong have raised $10.2 billion in U.S. IPOs so far in 2021—more than four times the total last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

One deal eagerly anticipated by investors is that by China-based ride-hailing giant Didi, which filed this month for a U.S. IPO that could value it at as much as $100 billion, Bloomberg News has reported. Its IPO could be one of the largest listings globally this year.

Full Truck Alliance, based in Guiyang, the capital of the southwestern Guizhou province, was formed from a merger between China’s two largest truck-sharing platforms—Huochebang and Yunmanman. Apart from Tencent and SoftBank, Full Truck’s backers include Alphabet Inc.’s CapitalG, Sequoia Capital China, Fidelity International and Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital.

Manbang Losses

The company posted a loss of $532 million on net revenue of $396 million last year, according to the filings. It said it plans to use the proceeds from its IPO on investing in infrastructure, technology innovation, expanding its service offerings, and for general corporate purposes, including meeting working capital needs and to fund potential acquisitions and investments.

Full Truck’s offering is being led by Morgan Stanley, China International Capital Corp. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Its ADS, each representing 20 ordinary shares, are trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol YMM.