Health-Care Big Data Provider Yidu Cloud Raises $529 Million in HK IPO

What’s new: More than 1 million investors subscribed for shares in Chinese health-care big data provider Yidu Cloud’s Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO), second only to the record number of investors who signed up for Ant Group Co. Ltd.’s canceled offering in November.

Boosted by the prospect of booming demand for health-care information amid the Covid-19 pandemic, 1.17 million mom-and-pop investors subscribed to buy Yidu Cloud’s shares, which were 1,633 times oversubscribed.

The company set its IPO at HK$26.30 ($3.39) a share, the high end of its price range, and raised HK$4.1 billion from the offering.

Yidu Cloud also brought in eight cornerstone investors for its IPO, which subscribed for $210 million of shares. These investors include health-care fund manager OrbiMed, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Brunei government-owned investment firm Yaqut Sdn Bhd and a unit of Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd.

In advance of its debut on Hong Kong Stock Exchange Friday, the shares traded at as high as HK$70 apiece in grey-market trading, indicating a market cap of HK$53 billion. The Grey Market is a trading platform licensed by the securities and futures commission to provide trading of pre-IPO shares before their official listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The background: Yidu Cloud, founded in 2014, offers health-care solutions built on big data and artificial intelligence technologies. The company partners with key health-care industry participants, including hospitals, pharmaceutical, biotech and medical devices companies, research institutions, insurance companies, doctors and patients, as well as regulators and policy makers.

The company transforms raw data from the hospital system into computable, standardized data to help improve the efficiency of medical research, clinical diagnosis and hospital operations management. Government agencies can also use the data to strengthen public health monitoring and supervision and implementation of population health management.

In the three months ended June 30, the company had a net loss of 506 million yuan ($78 million), compared with a net loss of 666 million yuan in the same period a year ago.

China’s health-care big data solutions market is expected to grow to 57.7 billion yuan by 2024 from about 10.5 billion yuan in 2019, according to a report by Ernst & Young.

Quick Takes are condensed versions of China-related stories for fast news you can use. To read the full story in Chinese, click here.

Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bobsimison@caixin.com).

Support quality journalism in China. Subscribe to Caixin Global starting at $0.99.