一些您需要知道有關獨角獸螞蟻金服的事 - 它可能是歷史上最大的IPO

 Yahoo Finance on 26 August 2020 reported the following:

What you need to know about unicorn Ant Financial, potentially the largest IPO in history

Daniel Roberts

Daniel RobertsEditor-at-Large

Yahoo Finance August 26, 2020, 2:08 a.m. PDT

 This “Ant” is really an elephant.

Ant Financial, which re-branded itself to Ant Group in June in an apparent effort to stress tech over finance and ward off Chinese finance regulators, filed papers on Tuesday to go public in a dual listing in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

The offering could eclipse the $29 billion raised by Saudi Aramco’s initial public offering, which listed last December on that country’s local market. If Ant’s target numbers hold, it would become the new largest IPO in history.

That’s fitting of the world’s most valuable private tech unicorn, last valued at $150 billion in 2018 after a record $14 billion funding round. Now it’s targeting a public valuation of $225 billion.

So, what exactly does Ant do, and how did it become so valuable?

Before Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014 (the world’s largest until Saudi Aramco), Alibaba CEO Jack Ma spun out its payments division under the name Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group, later just Ant Financial Services Group. The obvious aim was to eventually bring Ant public on its own. Four years later, Alibaba took a 33% stake in Ant. Ant Group’s CEO is Alibaba alum Simon Hu, but Jack Ma is Ant’s largest shareholder. (In its IPO filing, Ant Group says its “origin and continued affiliation with Alibaba is a source of strength as well as purpose.”)

Ant’s core product is Alipay, the most popular digital payments app in China. It boasts a more than 50% share of China’s massive mobile payments market, the largest in the world. Experts don’t see the mobile payment revolution slowing any time soon, and Alipay is the global king in mobile payments. It also sells tech services to other Chinese financial and e-commerce businesses.

Alipay launched in 2004 and hit 1.2 billion users last year. Almost all of its growth has come in Asia, though Alipay has signed a slew of U.S. partnerships with chains like Walgreens (WBA) and Neiman Marcus to let Alipay customers from China pay with Alipay when shopping in America. Last year, Alipay also opened up its app to American tourists in China — that was before the COVID-19 pandemic put a prolonged halt to global tourism.

Alipay users conduct more than 100 million mobile transactions on Alipay every day. The app’s biggest competitor in China is WeChat Pay, from Alibaba rival Tencent (TCEHY).

And then there’s Yu’ebao, China’s largest money-market fund, with $170 billion in assets. Ant Group owns that, too. Ant sees itself as far more than a payments firm: its stated mission is “to make it easy to do business anywhere.”

Ant’s public offering will stand apart from the new unicorn IPO parade about to happen in America: Airbnb, DoorDash, Snowflake, and Palantir (via directing listing) are all aiming to go public by the end of this year — but none are profitable yet.

Ant Group, in contrast, is wildly profitable. In its IPO filing, it reveals $3.2 billion of profit in the first half of 2020 ($10.5 billion in revenue), reflecting year-over-year growth of 1,000%. And that eye-popping profit came during a global pandemic.

Translation

這個“螞蟻”事實上是一頭大象。

螞蟻金服（Ant Financial）於6月更名為螞蟻集團（Ant Group），顯然強調技術多於金融，和避開中國金融監管機構。螞蟻金服並在週二提交了文件，在上海和香港雙重上市。

此次發行有可能超過沙特阿美公司的首次公開募股籌集的290億美元，該公司於去年12月在該國當地市場上市。如果螞蟻的目標數量保持不變，它將成為歷史上規模最大的新股發行。

這與全球最有價值的私人科技獨角獸相吻合，在獲得了一輪創紀錄的14億美元Billon融資後，該公司在2018年的估值為1500億美元。現在它的目標是公開估值能達到2250億美元。

那麼，螞蟻金服到底在做什麼，它如何變得如此有價值？

在阿里巴巴在2014年進行250億美元的IPO（全球規模最大，僅次於沙特阿美）之前，阿里巴巴首席執行官馬雲（Jack Ma）拆分了其支付部門，命名為浙江螞蟻小微金融服務集團，後稱螞蟻金融服務集團。顯而易見的目的是最終使螞蟻金服公開。四年後，阿里巴巴收購了螞蟻金服33％的股份。螞蟻集團的首席執行官是阿里巴巴的校友胡蒙（Simon Hu），但馬雲（Jack Ma）是螞蟻金服的最大股東。 （螞蟻集團在其首次公開募股文件中表示，“其起源和其持續與阿里巴巴的聯繫既是力量的源泉，也是宗旨的源泉。”）

螞蟻的核心產品是支付寶，這是中國最受歡迎的電子支付應用程式。它在中國龐大的移動支付市場中佔有超過50％的份額, 是全球最大的。專家認為，移動支付革命在可見將來不會放緩，支付寶是移動支付領域的全球之王。它還向其他中國金融和電子商務企業出售技術服務。

支付寶成立於2004年，去年擁有12億用戶。幾乎所有它的增長都來自亞洲，儘管支付寶已經與一連串的連鎖店簽署了美國合作夥伴關係, 例如Walgreens（WBA）和Neiman Marcus等，以允許來自中國的支付寶客戶在美國購物時使用支付寶付款。去年，支付寶還向中國的美國遊客開放了該應用程序 - 那是在COVID-19大流行使全球旅遊業長期停滯之前。

支付寶用戶每天在支付寶上進行超過1億筆移動交易。該應用程序在中國的最大競爭對手是來自阿里巴巴競爭對手騰訊（TCEHY）的微信支付。

然後有餘额寶 - 它是中國最大的貨幣市場基金，資產規模為1,700億美元。螞蟻集團也擁有它。螞蟻對自己的看法遠不止是一家支付公司：它的既定使命是“使在任何地方開展業務都變得容易”。

螞蟻的公開募股將與即將在美國進行的新的獨角獸IPO行列有別 - Airbnb，DoorDash，Snowflake和Palantir（通過定向上市）都旨在在今年年底之前公開募股，但所有尚未有盈利。

相反，螞蟻集團利潤豐厚。在其首次公開募股文件中，它顯示2020年上半年利潤32億美元（收入105億美元），同比增長1000％。全球大流行中有令人瞠目結舌的利潤。

              So, the Ant Group could earn profit during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

(Note: In the business world “unicorn” is a term to indicate a privately held start-up company valued at over $1 billion.)