According to a major news outlet, the stocks of DiDi went public last Wednesday in what has been termed as the biggest US Share offering. The offering was made by a Chinese company– considered to be the largest ever since Alibaba came to the scene in 2014.
The biggest ride-hailing service in China went up by $14.14 on its first day of trading at Wall Street- which is 1% above the initial price of public offering at around $14 a share. The stock then went on to climb by around 30% to reach a high of $18 in its earlier session of trading.
DiDi managed to raise close to $4.4 billion from the sale of its stocks- which makes it the largest IPO in China ever since Alibaba offered close to $25 billion back in 2014- as reported by Dealogic. At its closing price on Wednesday, the valuation of the company was set at $70 billion.
Political And Regulatory Headaches For DiDi
DiDi, which managed to overthrow Uber out of China five years ago, has since then got itself listed on Wall Street at a very precarious time. The company did manage to attract major scrutiny from regulators in mainland China- especially where the tech sector seems to be going through a huge crackdown.
Back in April, the service was one of the 34 companies that had been summoned for a meeting the State Administration for Market Regulation- where executives were informed to stop any anti-competitive behavior. They were also encouraged to carry out multiple internal inspections.
This month saw Reuters reporting that DiDi was seemingly investigated for concerns of an antitrust matter. As far as the report goes, the company was being probed by SAMR about whether it had started using competitive practices in order to squeeze out other rivals in an unfair manner. In a statement, the company announced that it would not be commenting on any unsubstantiated assumptions from uncredited sources. SAMR, on its part, did not end up responding to any requests for comments.