China’s Ant Group is expected to double its market value when it holds its initial public offering (IPO) on November 5.
The financial technology giant will be listed on Hong Kong and Shanghai’s stock exchanges following its record $37 billion IPO. The IPO values Ant Group, a spinoff of Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), at about $315 billion. The combined market cap of JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Citigroup (NYSE:C) and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is $548 billion.
Ant Group stock is expected to more than double in Shanghai on its debut. Ant Group, China’s dominant mobile payments firm that also offers loans, insurance and asset management, presents itself mainly as a technology vendor for financial institutions. Ant Group counts a billion users, more than $17 trillion in yearly payment volumes.
Large issuances typically curb a stock’s first-day rally on the Shanghai stock market, where debut gains average about 160%. But a long queue of retail investors who missed out during the Ant IPO process could test that. The Shanghai tranche of the IPO was heavily skewed toward strategic and institutional investors.
Last week, the Chinese fintech giant said individual investors in mainland China had placed the equivalent of more than $2.8 trillion of orders for shares of Ant’s record-breaking IPO, which is on track to be the biggest in history.