The Bilibili IPO kicked off today, marking one of the most highly-anticipated public offerings from a mobile gaming company.
Here are nine things to know about the company:
- The Bilbili IPO opened for trading for the first time and fell 65 cents quickly, or 5%, following its initial price of $11.50. It’s now selling at $10.85 per share.
- It was estimated that the opening price would be between $10.50 to $12.50 per share.
- The company has been targeting the ‘Generation Z,’ which refers to those born between 1990 and 2009.
- Bilibili is mostly a video game company, but CFO Sam Fan recently said that he hopes the company becomes more than this in the future.
- “We are an online entertainment platform with highly engaged users,” he said. The CFO says the company plans on enriching the everyday life of young generations in China.
- About 83.4% of the company’s 2017 revenue came from its mobile games, mostly from a role-playing game called Fate Grand Order.
- The game kicked off in September 2016 and its revenue increased from $83 million that year to $379 million in 2017.
- Bilibili hopes that in three to five years, the annual revenue of the company will only be roughly 50% form games, while advertising may comprise 30%, while fees from live streaming events will tally up to another 20%.
- “But we have very strong potential for advertising. We have 20% penetration of the Generation Z population in China, and for advertisers that is a very strong cohort. Our members have a very strong emotional connection with the creators of content on our platform, which total over 1 million creators,” Fan concluded.
