An online-commodities brokerage based in Shanghai has listed in the U.S., becoming one of the few Chinese technology companies to go public in New York this year.

Yintech Investment Holdings Ltd., which provides spot commodity-trading services to individuals trading silver, gold and other precious metals and commodities in China, listed on Nasdaq on Wednesday. The new offering comes as many Chinese tech companies are planning to delist shares to seek higher valuations on China's domestic exchanges.

The company priced at $13.50 a share late Tuesday, in the middle of the projected offering range of $12.50 to $14.50. Yintech raised $101 million from the initial public offering, which gave the company a market value of $857 million.

The offering has cornerstone backing from a subsidiary of Beijing-based, U.S.-traded Sina Corp., the operator of Internet portal and popular microblog service Weibo.com, which has invested $10 million. Jefferies Group LLC is handling the offering.

Yintech is only the third Chinese company to list in the U.S. this year. In the first such IPO of 2016, immuno-oncology drug developer BeiGene Ltd. raised $182 million on Nasdaq in February. This was followed in March by the $110 million Nasdaq IPO of Hutchison China MediTech Ltd., a pharmaceuticals company owned by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing's conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd.

The $393 million raised by these three companies surpasses the $349 million raised by all six Chinese companies that listed in the U.S. in 2015, according to data provider Dealogic. More Chinese companies listed in the U.S. have been going private and returning to China in the hope of achieving a higher valuation by listing in their home market, according to bankers.

A record 28 U.S.-listed Chinese companies valued at a combined $32.7 billion announced plans to go private last year, according to Dealogic, many of which did so with the intention of relisting in China. But the 700-plus companies logjam for IPOs in China has deterred some looking to raise money in the country, as has the delay in plans to launch a new Shanghai board for fast-growing and sometimes unprofitable technology companies.

"We did consider the domestic A-share market, but you need to wait in a very long queue that could be as long as three to four years," Wang Jingbo, Yintech's chief financial officer, said in an interview. "The purpose of the IPO is to further enhance our corporate brand and credibility."

Yintech joins a small but growing list of Chinese companies looking to list in the U.S. Chinese logistics company ZTO Express plans to raise between $1 billion and $2 billion later this year or early in 2017 from an IPO in the U.S., The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

Write to Alec Macfarlane at alec.macfarlane@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 27, 2016 10:55 ET (14:55 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Weibo (NASDAQ:WB)
Historical Stock Chart
From Feb 2024 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Weibo Charts.
Weibo (NASDAQ:WB)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2023 to Mar 2024 Click Here for more Weibo Charts.