A woman walks past a billboard of Kuaishou, a short video app, in Beijing. (PHOTO BY A QING / FOR CHINA DAILY)

Kuaishou Technology, the operator of China’s most popular video service after ByteDance’s Douyin, raised HK$42 billion (US$5.4 billion) after pricing its initial public offering in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) at the top of a marketed range.

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The short-video startup, backed by Tencent Holdings, sold 365 million shares at HK$115 apiece, according to terms for the deal obtained by Bloomberg on Friday. It was marketing the shares at HK$105 to HK$115 each.

Kuaishou’s IPO pricing values the company at US$60.9 billion. That’s more than double the US$28.6 billion valuation it achieved in a funding round last year, according to PitchBook

Kuaishou’s IPO pricing values the company at US$60.9 billion. That’s more than double the US$28.6 billion valuation it achieved in a funding round last year, according to PitchBook. The deal ranks as the world’s biggest internet IPO since Uber Technologies’s US$8.1 billion US share sale in May 2019. 

Kuaishou, which means “fast hand,” is one of China’s biggest internet success stories of the past decade, part of a generation of startups that thrived with backing from Tencent. Along with ByteDance, the outfit co-created by former Google engineer Su Hua in 2013 pioneered the live streaming and bite-sized video format that’s since been adopted around the world by the likes of Facebook Inc.

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The company attracted 10 cornerstone investors to its offering, who agreed to subscribe for around US$2.45 billion of stock, including Capital Group Cos, Temasek Holdings Pte, GIC Pte, BlackRock Inc and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority.

Kuaishou’s shares are due to start trading in Hong Kong on Feb 5. Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp and China Renaissance Holdings Ltd. are joint sponsors of the deal.