HONG KONG, China — LinkDoc Technology, a Chinese medical data company, has canceled its planned IPO in the United States at the last minute, according to two people familiar with the matter, becoming the first casualty of Beijing’s crackdown on abroad listings. The company aimed to raise up to $210 million on the tech-heavy Nasdaq platform, and after apparent significant demand, the sale was finalized on Wednesday. According to one of the persons, the company decided to cancel the offering due to market volatility, regulatory uncertainties, and a concern of angering Chinese regulators. Today, Linkdoc, which is supported by Alibaba Health Information, was supposed to price the sale and figure out how much money it would raise. LinkDoc’s move comes after Beijing intervened in the U.S. market debut of Chinese ride-hailing company Didi Global, which raised $4.4 billion in one of corporate China’s largest New York IPOs in years. China’s internet regulator launched a probe into Didi’s management of client data and prevented the company from signing up new customers, sending its stock plummeting and knocking billions of dollars off its valuation just days after its initial public offering. Beijing later expanded its investigation to include two other publicly traded companies in the United States: logistics firm Full Truck Alliance and online recruiter Kanzhun. On Tuesday, Chinese officials said that standards for abroad listings will be changed, and regulatory control of enterprises trading in offshore markets will be strengthened. The impending regulatory crackdown has caused investors in the United States to avoid Chinese stocks. Since the cyberspace agency’s initial salvo, the Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index, which monitors 98 Chinese companies listed in the United States, has dropped 7.9%. During the same time period, the S&P500 Index has climbed 0.9 percent. Last month, LinkdDoc, which was launched in 2014, filed for an IPO. It amended its selling prospectus on Wednesday, highlighting the dangers posed by Beijing’s new guideline on overseas IPOs. There are questions about how quickly “legislative or administrative regulation-making bodies” will respond, as well as what existing or new laws, rules, detailed implementations, and interpretations will be updated or adopted, according to the report. The company, which uses big data and artificial intelligence to provide cancer-focused health care services, had planned to sell 10.8 million shares at a price range of $17.50 to $19.50 each. According to Dealogic, 36 Chinese companies have issued initial public offerings in the United States this year, raising a total of $12.6 billion. This is the data provider’s fastest start to a year ever, compared to six listings that garnered $2.8 billion in the same period last year. Analysts and bankers now expect mainland company IPOs in the United States to decline, at least in the short term. According to persons familiar with the transactions, 16 companies were trying to raise over $4 billion, including Alibaba-backed Chinese media and data cloud service platform Qiniu, housekeeping services company Daojia, and digital freight transportation company ForU Worldwide. Due to data security concerns, Beijing is said to have persuaded podcast provider Ximalaya to abandon ambitions to list in the United States in favor of Hong Kong. The problem is also expected to play a role in ByteDance’s plans to IPO part or all of its businesses, including TikTok, which are being closely watched./n
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