Oct 17 (Reuters) - Chinese online micro-credit provider Qudian Inc’s initial public offering was priced at $24 per American depository share, according to sources close to the matter, above the expected range of $19-$22 each. The 37.5 million shares offering raised about $900 million, making it the largest U.S.-listing by a Chinese company this year. At $24 per share price, Qudian has a market value of as much as $7.9 billion. Backed by Alibaba’s banking unit Ant Financial, Qudian operates a website that allows college students and young white-collar workers to buy laptops, smartphones and other consumer electronics on monthly installments. Founded over three years ago, the company provided $5.6 billion of credit in H1 2017 to 7 million active borrowers. Qudian’s net income jumped near eight-times to 973.7 million yuan ($143.6 million) in the six months ended June 30, while revenue rose near five-fold to 1.83 billion yuan ($270.4 million) in the same period. Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Citigroup, CICC and UBS are joint bookrunners on the IPO. (Reporting by Roopal Verma, Nikhil Subba and Diptendu Lahiri in Bengaluru; editing by Ankur Banerjee)
Alibaba-backed online micro-lender Qudian has raised around $900m during its initial public offering, the largest in the US by a Chinese company this year. The company, which is based in San Francisco, said it had received more than $2bn of funding from investors including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Nasdaq. The company, whose platform enables students and young professionals to buy consumer electronics for monthly repayments, posted revenue of CNY1.83bn ($276m) in the six months through June.