Autonomous Driving Chip Manufacturer Black Sesame Intelligent Plans to Raise up to 1.12 Billion HKD in IPO
Black Sesame Intelligent Technology, a Chinese manufacturer of autonomous driving chips, announced today its plan to go public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company aims to issue 37 million shares with a proposed price range of 28.00 to 30.30 Hong Kong dollars per share. If successful, this could raise up to 1.12 billion Hong Kong dollars. The shares, under the stock code 2533, are expected to start trading on August 8th.
Previously, on June 30th, Black Sesame Intelligent had submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with the intention to list on the main board. The joint sponsors for this endeavor are CICC and Huatai International.
Significantly, Black Sesame Intelligent is the first company to formally submit a listing document under the newly effective Rule 18C of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, which was implemented on March 31st this year.
According to the application, Black Sesame Intelligent specializes in providing automotive-grade System on Chips (SoCs) and SoC-based solutions for intelligent vehicles. The company initially developed the Huashan series of high-performance SoCs for autonomous driving. More recently, they introduced the Wudang series of cross-domain SoCs to cater to the increasingly diverse and complex demands of advanced intelligent vehicle functions.
Over the past three years, the company’s revenue has shown an upward trend, with earnings of 53 million yuan in 2020, 61 million yuan in 2021, and 165 million yuan in 2022.
The funds raised from this IPO will be invested in various areas, including the development of automotive-grade SoCs for intelligent cars, software development to support intelligent vehicles, research and development of autonomous driving solutions, and the enhancement of their commercialization capabilities.