Meicai Reportedly Gearing Up for US IPO

According to Reuters’ International Financing Review, Chinese fresh produce mobile e-commerce platform Meicai is considering listing in the U.S. as early as this year to raise $500 million in financing. Informed sources were quoted as saying that the company is currently in discussions with financial consultants regarding initial public offering matters.

In February of this year, Meicai was reportedly in the exploratory stages of an IPO to raise approximately $300 million but had not yet decided on a listing venue. This news came amid the sudden departure of Meicai’s CFO Wang Can for family reasons, which was viewed by some as a potential impediment to the company’s IPO plans.

Founded in 2014, Meicai is an F2B (factory-to-business) fresh produce supply chain company whose core business lies in providing one-stop food ingredient procurement services to restaurants throughout China. Since 2019, the company has been expanding its business to general consumers via the launch of its subsidiary brand Meijia Maicai (美家买菜), a community group-buying platform.

According to Tianyancha.com, Meicai has collected a total of 8.5 billion Chinese yuan ($1.3 billion) through eight rounds of funding. With the exception of 2017, the company conducted two rounds of financing each year between receiving its initial investment of 10 million yuan ($1.6 million) in 2014 and the most recent round in October 2018, backed by investors including Shunwei Capital, ZhenFund and Blue Lake Capital. In July 2020 when the former CFO of Fosun International Ltd. Wang Can joined Meicai, the company was already valued at 50 billion yuan ($7.8 billion).

To date, Meicai has served approximately 2 million restaurants in over 300 Chinese cities, with daily sales in excess of 100 million yuan ($15.5 million).

Image: Meicai

This article was translated from Chinese. Read the original article.