FAST NEWS: Hotel Operator Atour Jumps 17% in New York Trading Debut

The latest: Shares of Chinese hotel operator Atour Lifestyle Holdings Ltd. (ATAT.US) surged as much as 55% to a high of $17.05 in their trading debut on the Nasdaq last Friday, after the company sold shares at an IPO price of $11.

Looking up: Atour’s underwriters included BofA Securities and Citigroup, making it the first successful U.S. IPO for a Chinese stock underwritten by major western investment banks in over a year.

Take Note: The company raised $52 million after pricing 4.8 million American depositary shares (ADS) at the bottom of their price range of $11 to $13. The final funds raised was well below the company’s initial $350 million fundraising target when it first filed its listing plan last year.

Digging Deeper: Atour’s road to the U.S. capital market has been filled with twists and turns. The company filed its initial prospectus to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in June last year. But not long after that, SEC doubts about the accuracy of financial statements from Chinese companies and Chinese government concerns about data security risks involved in such cross-border IPOs, brought the U.S. listing of Chinese stocks to a near complete halt for more than a year. The two countries signed an information-sharing agreement at the end of August this year, allowing the U.S. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to inspect the audit records of Chinese stocks in Hong Kong. That paved the way for Atour to restart its IPO, which it finally completed last week after significantly lowering its fundraising target.

Market Reaction: After the early surge in its trading debut last Friday, Atour’s shares gave back some of those gains and ultimately closed at $12.88, 17.1% above their IPO price.

Translation by Jony Ho

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