Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent invest in Foxconn Industrial Internet's IPO

Twenty strategic investors, including China’s state-level funds and top dot-com firms, have invested in Foxconn Industrial Internet, which just concluded its US$4.3 billion IPO considered as the biggest in the past three years in the domestic market.

Foxconn Industrial Internet is the smart device unit of Taiwan-based Hong Hai, which is the made-to-order manufacturer for Apple's iPhone and is the world's largest contract electronics manufacturer. The company, which will be listed in Shanghai, plans to utilize the capital raised to finance 20 projects, including the Internet of Things, cloud computing, data centers, 5G and smart manufacturing technologies.

The 20 strategic investors were allotted 590.8 million shares, about 30 per cent of the total IPO. The IPO price is 13.77 yuan (US$2.17) with a lock-in period of between one and four years for the strategic investors.

The investors include Zhongyang Huijin Investment, a fund of the Ministry of Railway, China Life and other state-owned enterprises, along with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. Each of the top three dot-coms has bought 21.8 million shares of the company, which are worth about 300 million yuan, said Foxconn Industrial Internet in a statement to the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The final approval for its Shanghai listing from the China Securities Regulatory Commission came only three months after the company’s application and was one of the fastest approved IPOs in China as it normally takes more than a year.

In 2017, Foxconn Industrial Internet's revenue rose to 357 billion yuan from 273 billion yuan the year before, and net profit totaled 15.9 billion yuan, up from 14.4 billion yuan in 2016.