Indonesian courier services startup J&T Express filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in Hong Kong on Friday. Although the heavily-redacted application did not divulge the details of the fundraising size and timeline, a Bloomberg report said that the proposed sale share is expected to raise $500 million to $1 billion, citing sources familiar with the matter.
An undisclosed part of the IPO proceeds will be used to expand the firm’s logistics networks, improve its infrastructure, and strengthen its sorting and warehouse capacity and capabilities in Southeast Asia and other existing markets, as well as market expansion and R&D, per the filing.
Since its inception in 2015, the Indonesia-rooted firm has expanded to other Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia, and Singapore, making itself the top express delivery operator in the region, with a market share of 22.5% by parcel volume, according to Frost & Sullivan.
It subsequently expanded to China in 2020, and the Middle East market, including Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt; as well as Mexico and Brazil in 2022.
Morgan Stanley Asia Limited Merrill Lynch (Asia Pacific) Limited, China International Capital Corporation, and Hong Kong Securities Limited have been appointed as the overall coordinators, per the filing.
The IPO application comes at a time when the Hong Kong bourse kicked off Q1 at a sedentary pace. The Hong Kong Stock Exchange hosted 18 IPOs, raising a total of HK$ 6.6 billion in Q1 2023 compared with 15 IPOs raising HK$13.6 billion in the same period of 2022, according to a report published by Deloitte.
The data show a 20% growth in deal volume, yet a 51% drop in deal value, while all the offerings were small and there were no return listings of China concept stocks or IPOs of life sciences and healthcare companies, the report added.
Chinese liquor company ZJLD Group, which is the biggest IPO in the city so far, struggled in its market debut, raising a total of $675.2 million in the sale share in late April.
J&T Express counts Tencent, Boyu, ATM, D1, Hillhouse, GLP, Sequoia, SF Express, Dahlia, SAI Growth, and CMBI among some of its backers. It incurred a loss of around $1.6 billion on $7.3 billion revenues for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2022, per the filing.
