- “This is probably the biggest goal for Alibaba Group itself,” Kingston Securities executive director Dickie Wong said of Ant Group’s IPO plans, adding “there is great hope” for a listing.
- Ant Group’s world record-breaking IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong was suspended in November 2020.
Chinese tech stocks led gains in Asia-Pacific on Wednesday as Hong Kong-listed shares of Alibaba jumped higher, a day after the company announced a sweeping restructuring to split the tech giant into six entities.
The Hang Seng Tech Index rose nearly 3% in the afternoon, its highest in more than a month — as shares of Alibaba and its peers like Meituan, JD.com and Tencent pushed the index higher.
Analysts say Alibaba’s sweeping overhaul is likely to bring back the spotlight on Ant Group’s record-breaking IPO, which was unexpectedly suspended in November 2020.
Alibaba owns 33% of Ant, which powers AliPay, one of China’s two dominant mobile payment apps.
“I really think so [Alibaba is] aim for a bigger goal,” said Dickie Wong, executive director of Kingston Securities. “In terms of the big picture, that would obviously be the Ant Group [being] reintroduced to the stock market,” he told CNBC’s Street Signs Asia on Wednesday.
“This is probably the biggest goal for Alibaba Group itself,” Wong said of Alibaba’s restructuring plans, adding that the expected Hong Kong listing won’t happen any time soon, “but there are high hopes” for a deal soon.
HANGZHOU, CHINA – OCTOBER 27: A logo of Ant Group is seen at the company’s headquarters in Hangzhou, east China’s Zhejiang province, on October 27, 2020.
vcg | Visual China Group | Getty Images
Ant received approval from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission earlier this year to expand its consumer finance business, a sign that the company could be one step closer to resolving regulators’ concerns.
To be clear, Alibaba’s announcement for the overnight overhaul made no mention of Ant.
KraneShares CIO Brendan Ahern said it’s likely that investors would focus on Ant’s IPO.
“The one part of the press release that I think investors will demand is the lack of talk about Ant Group,” Ahern said.
“But the certainty that Alibaba’s renewed relationship or favor along with the government and its regulators is really driven by China’s need for domestic consumption in 2023,” he added.
– CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng and Arjun Kharpal contributed to this report.
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