By Scott Murdoch and Donny Kwok
HONG KONG (Reuters) - JD (NASDAQ:JD) Health International Inc shares rose as much as 46.5% above the issue price in their Hong Kong trading debut on Tuesday, following an initial public offering (IPO) that was the city's largest of 2020.
JD Health is a subsidiary of e-commerce giant JD.com Inc specialising in online medical consultation and pharmaceutical sales.
It was valued at $29 billion ahead of the debut but the share price increase now puts that valuation nearer $39 billion.
The company sold the shares at HK$70.58 each to raise $3.48 billion. The stock opened at HK$94.50 before rallying to as high as $HK103.3, becoming Hong Kong's most actively traded stock by turnover early in the session.
The stock bucked a downward trend in the broader local market as the benchmark Hang Seng Index fell 0.4%.
Kingston Securities executive director of research Dickie Wong said with market capitalisation of that size, JD Health would likely be fast-tracked into the Shanghai Hong Kong Stock Connect and the Hang Seng technology index.
"Investors are thinking they don't want to wait to buy the stock," he told Reuters.
"Once the stock moves into the tech index, then index funds have to buy it no matter what they think of the company so investors are taking advantage of the likely move now."
The rise in JD Health's first-day trading could make it vulnerable to a sell-off in the next few days, said Everbright Sun Hung Kai research analyst Kenny Ng.
"JD Health provides a good opportunity for profit-taking in short term if its share price is above $HK100 since IPO investors have already got around 40% return," he said.
The firm's IPO prospectus showed it had 72.5 million annual active users as of June 30 versus 53.5 million at the same time last year.
Its IPO was the largest in Hong Kong in 2020, followed by China Bohai Bank Co Ltd's $2.05 billion listing in July. Dealmakers expect more activity to unfold during December.
The float has taken Hong Kong's IPO proceeds to over $25 billion in 2020, from over 100 individual deals, on track for the best year in a decade, Refinitiv data showed.
Adding secondary listings - including JD.com's $4.4 billion transaction in June - the value reaches $39.1 billion so far this year.