JD Health (HKEX: 6618), China’s largest online healthcare platform by total revenue, climbed 33.18% upon its public debut on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday, raising a total of HKD 26.5 billion (USD 3.4 billion), leapfrogging the previous estimation of USD 1.6 billion.
The public listing of JD Health, an affiliate of e-commerce giant JD.com (NASDAQ: JD; HKEX: 9618), became the largest initial public offering on the Hong Kong exchange this year and Asia’s biggest listing in the health sector, surpassing Japanese drug maker Otsuka Holdings’ USD 2.3 billion IPO in 2010, according to Bloomberg.
JD Health is the first of JD.com’s four unicorn subsidiaries to be publicly traded. Fintech arm JD Digits, and logistics unit JD Logistic are set to go public soon, while industry-facing shopping site JD MRO (stands for maintenance, repair, and operations) raised USD 230 million in its Series A fundraising round in May.
After spinning off from JD.com in 2019, Beijing-based JD Health became the youngest unicorn to be included on the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 in the health tech sector.
During the COVID-19 outbreak, JD Health’s online retail pharmacy, the biggest in China by market share, reported revenue growth of more than 87.6% in the first six months of 2020. The retail pharmacy was able to leverage JD Logistics’ network to meet the general public’s surging demand for healthcare products, according to the firm’s earnings report.
JD Health collected a total revenue of USD 1.33 billion, a 76% bump from the same period in 2019. A major part of its revenue came from direct sales of medical and healthcare products, according to its prospectus. The firm counts Alibaba-backed AliHealth (HKEX: 0241), and Ping An Good Doctor (HKEX:1833) as main competitors in China.