CEO of mining giant Bitmain Wu Jihan (Jihan Wu) confirmed that the company is open to an initial public offering (IPO).
In an interview with Bloomberg in Hong Kong, Wu noticed that an IPO in this region or any other market with the nomination of shares in U.S. dollars will be the appropriate means for investment of early investors.
Jihan Wu founded Bitmain together Mikri Jan (Zhan Micree) in 2013. According to Wu, they now together own about 60% of the company.
Earlier, analysts at Bernstein estimated that for 2017 Bitmain made a profit of $3-4 billion — more than Nvidia. Chapter Bitmain has called in interviews a lower figure of $2.5 billion.
Experts find it difficult to assess the potential market value of Chinese companies, since few comparable comparisons. But focusing on such publicly traded chip manufacturers like MediaTek or Nvidia, they assessed approximately $8.8 billion.
Informed about their plans IPO said the company Canaan Creative is the main competitor of Bitmain. In may, the second largest manufacturer of mining equipment declined from the original plan of carrying out IPO in the U.S. in favor of Hong Kong. According to Bloomberg, the company has already applied for Hong Kong stock exchange and could raise up to $1 billion.
Canaan is about 15% of the market production mining ASIC, Bitmain share remains much more — about 75%.
“Bitmain is trying very hard to keep their advantage,” said Jihan Wu in an interview.
As noted by Mizuho Securities Asia analyst Kevin Wang (Kevin Wang), the first of these companies, which will be released on the IPO, will receive a prize to the assessment, because such are very few.
“But sustainability is the issue,” he added.
Transformation into a public company can help Bitmain to go in a new area, for example, the field of artificial intelligence that has the full support of the Chinese authorities, unlike cryptocurrencies.
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