E-scooter firm Niu of China files for $150M U.S. IPO
Niu is among China’s largest electric scooter manufacturers. Now they are looking to get listed on the U.S. stock exchange, where they seek an IPO worth 150 million dollars to increase production, intensify R&D and widen their distribution.
Niu is a relatively new company, set up in 2015 by Li Yinan, former chief technology officer of China’s largest internet search company Baidu reportedly. Yet they claim to hold a 26 percent marketshare when it comes to sales volume thanks to their premium positioning which they intend to build on further.
In their application for an initial public offering (IPO) in the U.S., Niu has not specified a price per share but is aiming for a listing worth 150 million dollars. According to Niu, they are “to use the net proceeds from this offering for upgrade and expansion of manufacturing facilities, research and development, distribution network expansion and general corporate purposes.”
Their numbers support the application with their revenue having practically doubled each year.
In terms of product, they offer three versions of Niu electric scooters, that all integrate smartphones and thus enable the company to gather data from the “over 457,000 registered users” Niu claims to have had as of June 30, 2018. The filing also speaks of using technology from Bosch.
Their first market is China but the SEC filing also mentions of South East Asia as a less saturated region when it comes to electric scooters. Moreover, Niu has included data on the market in Europe so that is is very likely they plan to grow their electric scooter business further here. By filing for an IPO in the States, their market entry there is an option of course.
According to the China Insights Consultancy (CIC), the electric two-wheeled vehicles market in the EU will reach 3.7 million units in terms of volume and be worth 7.5 billion euros in terms of sales value by 2022.
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