A logo of the hail giant Didi Chuxing on a building in Hangzhou in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang.
STR | AFP | Getty Images
Chinese giant Didi Chuxing reportedly took on $ 1.5 billion in debt ahead of a blockbuster IPO in the United States, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter.
According to a Reuters report, the Softbank-backed company also plans on Friday to secretly file a July listing later this month under the auspices of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
According to PitchBook data, Didi was valued at $ 62 billion after a fundraising round in August. Both Bloomberg and Reuters report that the company could consider a valuation of $ 100 billion at the time of its Wall Street debut.
A US-based spokesman for the company reached by CNBC declined to comment.
A Didi IPO could be one of the biggest tech IPOs this year and one of the biggest Chinese IPOs in the US since Alibaba was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. The Ant Group IPO, which would have been the largest in history, was pulled by regulators just days before trading began in Shanghai and Hong Kong in November. The IPO was suspended shortly after Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba, which owns around a third of the Ant Group, made some comments that were critical of China’s financial regulator. The Ant Group was also an early investor in Didi.
Last May, Didi President Jean Liu told CNBC that the company’s core business was profitable and that it had picked up again after the coronavirus outbreak in China, its home market. Liu did not provide any specific numbers or what measure of profitability she was referring to.
Didi has been on the CNBC Disruptor 50 list for the past three consecutive years, most recently at number 30 on last year’s list. Headquartered in Beijing, the company operates in China and eight overseas markets, including Australia and Japan.
