Successful debut on STAR Market for QingCloud

The share price of QingCloud, a cloud computing service provider, jumped 29 percent on its first trading day on the Shanghai STAR Market, after its initial public offering to raise 1.19 billion yuan (US$188.9 million).

The company's share price closed at 82.13 yuan on Monday with a market value of about 3.9 billion yuan.

QingCloud is the first listed hybrid cloud service provider — one that offers services in both private and public cloud markets — in China.

“Cloud is the cornerstone of the digital world, because it enables people to use technologies and products without owning them at a much lower cost,” said Huang Yunsong, chairman and chief executive officer of QingCloud.

In 2019, China’s hybrid cloud market revenue was 19.75 billion yuan, which is predicted to jump to 89.29 billion yuan in 2024, according to CCW Research.

The hybrid cloud market accounted for only 9.8 percent of the cloud market in China, compared with 58 percent globally, which points to huge growth potential.

QingCloud benefits from China’s national strategies like intelligent infrastructure construction and boosting digital transformation, company officials said.

“The successful listing of QingCloud on STAR Market shows recognition of domestically developed cloud-computing technology by the capital market,” said James Mi, founding partner of Lightspeed China Partners, the company’s major investor. 

QingCloud may become a world-class cloud platform, contributing to core information infrastructure construction and national data security, according to Jui Tan, managing partner of BlueRun Ventures China, another major investor of the company.

Founded in 2012, it primarily offers services in industries like banking, insurance, energy, transportation, education, healthcare and manufacturing, targeting manufacturing bases in the Yangtze River Delta and Zhujiang Delta. 

In 2019, the company's revenue reached 377 million yuan, 34 percent higher than a year earlier. In the first six months of 2020, its revenue was 144 million yuan.

Unlike other cloud firms such as Alibaba Cloud, AWS and STAR-listed UCloud, QingCloud primarily offers cloud software and services and rents IT infrastructure, a strategy that helps it avoid huge investments in data centers.

Ti Gong