Chinese Hotel Chain Atour Set for Nasdaq Debut and ADS Issuance

Atour Lifestyle, a leading Chinese hotel chain, submitted its prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on November 7, with plans to officially list on the Nasdaq under the stock code “ATAT” on November 14.

Atour Lifestyle Holdings Ltd., established in 2013, plans to issue 4.75 million American depository shares (ADSs) through this IPO, with an issue range of $11 to $13 apiece. Calculated by the upper limit of this range, Atour could raise as much as $61.75 million with this IPO and remain at a maximum market value of about $1.8 billion.

This means that Atour will become the first Chinese stock listed in the US to issue ADSs since Didi went public on June 30, 2021. Prior to this, several Chinese companies have listed in the US, but all of them have issued common shares. Even GigaCloud, a global logistics firm backed by DCM and JD.com, has issued common shares.

The underwriters of Atour’s IPO are six leading investment banks and securities from China and abroad, namely Bank of America, Citigroup, CICC, CMB International, Redbridge Securities and Tiger Brokers. In addition, Snow Lake Capital intends to subscribe for ADSs worth up to $10 million. On November 7, Sean Ma, founder of Snow Lake Capital, published a research report on Luckin Coffee, commenting that the target market value of the coffee chain was $14.7 billion, indicating that the venture capital institution is quite optimistic about the prospects of Chinese firms.

According to data from Frost & Sullivan, Atour is the largest mid-to-high-end hotel chain in China in terms of the number of rooms, as of the end of 2021. From 2017 to 2021, the firm ranked first in the list of high-end hotel chains under the China Hotel Industry Association.

At present, Atour has six sub-brands for business travel, luxury lifestyle and Generation Z. In 2021, 23.6% of its customers were under 30 years old and 45.5% were between 30 and 40 years old.

As of June 30, 2022, Atour operated 834 hotels in 151 cities in China, with a total of 96,969 individual rooms, while a further 37,795 rooms at 343 hotels are under development. Of these 834 hotels, 161 are located in first-tier cities and 501 are located in new first-tier and second-tier cities.

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From 2019 to 2021, Atour’s net income was 1.567 billion yuan ($216 million), 1.567 billion yuan and 2.148 billion yuan respectively, while the net profit was 64.96 million yuan, 42.05 million yuan and 145 million yuan respectively. In the first half of 2022, the net income and net profit of Atour were 967 million yuan and 68 million yuan respectively.

Before the firm’s IPO, Wang Haijun, Atour’s founder, chairman and CEO, held 31.3% of its shares. Among the external investors, Legend Capital, Divine Capital and Trip.com hold 30.4%, 16.2% and 14.8% shares respectively.