Canaan Creative Co. Ltd, the Chinese company behind the Avalon lineup of hardware equipment which produces ASIC mining chips and rigs, has officially submitted a listing application to Asia’s third-largest equities market – the Hong Kong stock exchange.
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$1 Billion IPO
Canaan posted a preliminary prospectus on Tuesday revealing it brought in a revenue of 1.3 billion yuan in 2017 and that its net income jumped over 600% to 361 million yuan. Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG and CMB International Capital Ltd. are named as joint sponsors of the proposed offering in the preliminary prospectus. The filing did not specify the amount Canaan will try to raise in the public offering but it is widely expected to be around $1 billion.
The Chinese ASIC cryptocurrency hardware market grew to 7.3 billion yuan in 2017 from just 50 million yuan in 2013, Canaan revealed in the filing, and consultant Frost & Sullivan extrapolates, that it will reach 28.6 billion yuan by 2020. The exact target date for the stock listing Canaan has in mind was not made public, and might change along with other details as the matter is evolving, but a person with knowledge of the situation told Bloomberg the company aims to start trading as soon as July 2018, just about two months from now.
Canaan to HK
The Hong Kong market wasn’t the company’s only possible avenue for listing. Last year Canaan was known to be looking to list on China’s National Equities Exchange and Quotations, an over-the-counter market, and earlier this year it was reportedly examining its options for a US-based IPO. The company didn’t explain why it eventually picked Hong Kong but it
