Chinese internet giant Baidu said on Thursday it wanted to raise up to $ 3.6 billion, or around € 3 billion, by debuting on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, in addition to its current listing on Wall. Street.
Listed on the Nasdaq index of the New York Stock Exchange, the "
Chinese Google
" indicated in its request that it wanted to sell 95 million shares at a ceiling price of 295 Hong Kong dollars, or 38.01 US dollars, per share, to the occasion of this secondary listing.
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Hong Kong has become an attractive place for Chinese tech companies, subject to tighter oversight and restrictions in the United States.
Many have sought in recent months to get on primary and secondary listings closer to China, as the Sino-US trade war escalated under the US presidency of Donald Trump.
In June 2020, Chinese e-commerce group JD.com, another US-listed tech giant, raised some 3.5 billion euros when it debuted on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Baidu on Thursday announced its intention to use the money from the Hong Kong listing to develop its artificial intelligence and mobile services.
Founded in 2000, the group became the main search engine provider in China after Google was blocked in the country in 2010.
In recent years, the company has branched out into services like mapping and food delivery, while investing in artificial intelligence applications like robotaxis.
Baidu said on Thursday in a filing with the US Stock Exchange's regulator, the SEC, that its financial results last year were "
significantly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic
," resulting in a drop in 5% over one year of the turnover of online advertising services, its main source of income.
Baidu said it wanted to set the price of its listing in Hong Kong around March 17.
