Robosense shares fall on debut in first Hong Kong IPO of 2024

Shares of Alibaba-backed Robosense Technology fell 2 per cent on its Friday debut in the first new listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange this year, report CNBC.
Robosense, a Chinese developer of laser imaging, detection and ranging (LiDAR) sensors for self-driving cars, announced January that it had raised HK$985.12 million ($126.14 million) in its IPO by offering 22.9 million shares at HK$43 each.
About 20.61 million of the shares in the IPO were initially allocated to the international offer, which ended up to be 1.28 times subscribed.
In contrast, the public offer received a cooler reception, with the initial offering of 2.29 million shares only 0.58 times subscribed.
As such, 952,000 shares were reallocated from the public offer to the international offer. Another 2.86 million shares were also over-allocated to the international offer, bringing it to 24.4 million shares.
The IPO's cornerstone investor was state-owned enterprise Nanshan Strategic Emerging Industries Investment, owned by the Nanshan district government.
Nanshan SEI will subscribe to 79.3 per cent of the IPO shares, or about HK$781.2 million.
Most notably, the announcement also revealed that Cainiao, the logistics arm of tech giant Alibaba, was Robosense's biggest pre-IPO shareholder, with a stake of 10.46 per cent.
In a Dec. 27 announcement, RoboSense said it plans to use around 45 per cent of the IPO net proceeds on research and development and team expansion, in order to build up its product pipeline.
Another 40 per cent will be used to boost the company's sales and marketing efforts, while the remaining 15 per cent will be used for general working capital and exploring potential strategic partnerships or alliance opportunities.