Frenzied demand for Ping An Healthcare and Technology Co.’s initial public offering isn’t translating into a strong debut.
The company, known as Good Doctor, eked out a 1.2 percent gain at 11:09 a.m. in Hong Kong, poised for the worst first-day performance by a technology company on the city’s main board since October 2014. That’s after the company drew HK$373 billion ($47.5 billion) of retail money for a $1.1 billion IPO.
The weak start weighed on Hong Kong’s stock market, with the Hang Seng Index falling 0.6 percent. Investors have grown used to instant profits from IPOs, with China Literature Ltd. surging more than 80 percent on its first day after completing a similar-size technology IPO in November. The question now is whether this will damp demand for Xiaomi Corp., which is planning what may be the world’s biggest IPO since 2014 in Hong Kong.
Good Doctor’s performance is “a bit surprising” and hurting sentiment, said Steven Leung, UOB Kay Hian (Hong Kong) Ltd. executive director.
The share sale valued the company — a unit of China’s biggest insurer by market value — at about 6 times projected 2020 sales, compared with 5.1 times for Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd. and 5.4 times for U.S. telehealth provider Teladoc, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were joint sponsors of the offering.
Bloomberg
