China’s AI-powered mobile internet company CooTek – the creator of TouchPal, a mobile devices input software amongst other lifestyle and health apps – debuted on the NYSE under the ticker symbol “CTK” at an opening share price of US$12 apiece, at the lower-end range. However, its share went tumbling down by as much as 21% to close at just US$9.44 per share.
Overall, it raised a mere US$52 million – close to a 50% drop from its initial US$100 million target – for issuing up to 4.35 million American depository shares (ADS).
This Shanghai-based firm counts Qiming Venture Partners, SIG China Investments, and Sequoia Capital China as its backers.
The newly raised funds will be used to invest in big data analytics and AI technology; fund further research and development activities; to develop new products and services.
10-year-old CooTek began by offering TouchPal Smart Input – a smart keyboard app and has since also expanded into other mobile app categories. It claims to have 133 million daily active users (DAU) across more than 240 countries to-date.
Interestingly, though CooTek’s public offering is one of the worst-performing public debuts amongst Chinese tech firms, the company actually managed to turn its US$16.2 million net loss into a net income of US$3.5 million during the first half of 2018. This is, indeed, a big feat when considering that CooTek only started to monetize its services very recently.
Takeaways
– Despite the dismal public offering performance, Seeking Alpha is still more bullish on CooTek as opposed to other companies like the Xiaomi-backed Viomi mainly for the reasons that CooTek has better gross margins and scalability potential.
– Unlike HK-listed Xiaomi, Nasdaq-listed Pinduoduo, and HK-listed Meituan-Dianping, CooTek has reportedly already became profitable before its public offering.
Editor: Ben Jiang