China’s Largest Bike Share Files for USA Float

By Phil Latz | 12th May 2021 |

Hellobikes like these and related two wheeled vehicles were hired 5.1 billion times last year. That’s almost 14 million hires every day. Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons.

China

Hello, China’s largest bike-share provider, recently filed information in preparation for its U.S. IPO (initial public offering). After three consecutive years of losses, the Ant-backed micromobility giant plans to raise as much as US$1 billion (A$1.3 billion) through its public offering.

As of the end of 2020, Hello had 10 million two-wheelers across 400 cities with approximately 100m active users in China.

In 2020 it facilitated 5.1 billion bike trips, generating an average of US$0.17 (A$0.22) per ride – rides are cheap in China! But this low figure was still than double its revenue per ride since 2018.

This increase is in part thanks to the rising popularity of electric two-wheelers, which Hello can charge more for. As of 2020, about one in five trips were electric.

Hello earned US$926m (A$1.2 billion) in revenue in 2020—more than 90% of which came from two-wheeler service—yet still faced a net loss of US$176 million (A$228 million).

With over 100 million active users each quarter in China, whose urban population is 843 million about one in eight potential riders is using Hello. Each user averages 40 rides per year.

Revenue per ride has grown 266% over the past three years. A prime reason for this increase is because they’ve added e-mopeds. This category has grown from zero rides in 2018 to 1.1 billion rides in 2020

The Ant Group, founded by Jack Ma owns 36.3% of Hello, whose most recent private valuation March 2021 was US$3.5 billion (A$4.5 billion).

Hello also operate a car pooling platform, but this is a relatively small part of their total business, earning 7.6% of their revenue compared to 92.4% from two wheeled hires.

Hello has 4,500 employees. It’s initial fund raising target is US$100 million (A$130 million). It plans to list on the Nasdaq – the USA’s leading exchange for technology stocks.

Hello, which was originally called Hellobike, is only five years old, having been founded in 2016.

Information for this article came from micromobility.io and Forbes