Ant Group Flexing

Emailed on August 28, 2020 in The Friday Forward

In its much-anticipated filing to go public in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Chinese fintech giant Ant Group has demonstrated its hold over the Chinese financial services market with its massive scale and profitability.

Ant Group’s revenue grew 38% year-over-year in the first half of 2020 to 72.5 billion yuan (about $10.5 billion), according to its filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company recorded a 21.9 billion yuan profit in the first half of this year, more than all of last year’s profits.

Ant is seeking to bring in $30 billion in the IPO at a $225 billion valuation, according to Bloomberg, a mark that could surpass Saudi Aramco’s $29 billion offering last year. The company reportedly plans to sell at least 10% of its shares.

Ant’s Alipay service has over 1 billion users and 711 million monthly active users. It logged 118 trillion yuan in transaction volume across mainland China for the 12 months ended in June. Jack Ma controls 50.5% of Ant’s voting rights, while Alibaba owns a third of the company, according to the filing.

The company saw a shift in revenue generation in the first half of the year, with digital payments no longer accounting for the largest share. The credit business generated 39.4% of revenue, compared with 35.9% for digital payments during the same period. Huabei, Ant’s microlending platform, and Jiebei, its advanced credit offering, are used by more Chinese consumers than any other credit products, Ant said in the filing. The company’s investment and insurance segments are also growing quickly; combined they turned out nearly a quarter of Ant’s business this year.