ZTO Express Inc., a major Chinese logistics company, is planning a US initial public offering (IPO) that could be the biggest U.S. listing by a Chinese company since e-commerce giant
Alibaba's US$25 billion IPO, according to press reports.
Alibaba is one of ZTO's major customers, while it also counts Chinese online retail giant JD.com Inc. among its clientele.
The Shanghai-based delivery company, which aims to raise as much as US$1.3 billion, is marketing 72.1 million American depository receipts, or ADRs, for $16.50 to $18.50 apiece, according to a
filing last week.
ZTO Express would be the first courier-services provider in China to list on a U.S. stock exchange and a successful sale would rank it as number seven among all IPOs by Chinese companies on a
U.S. exchange, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
No end of growth in sight
Founded in 2002, ZTO Express handled 2.9 billion packages in 2015, according to its IPO prospectus, up 62 percent from a year earlier. The 827.7 million packages ZTO Express transported in the
first quarter of 2016 made up 14% of all express parcels delivered in China, according to iResearch, cited in the IPO prospectus.
The company now has more than 10,000 service centres covering most of mainland China. It has also invested 10 billion yuan (US$1.53 billion) into building large-scale logistics centres.
Nol van Fenema
Write a comment