Billionaire Richard Li's Insurer FWD Refiles For Hong Kong IPO
Richard Li
Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li's insurer FWD Group announced Monday it has refiled an application to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, as investors clamor for a piece of the city's red-hot IPO market.
FWD did not disclose the target size or timing of its upcoming offering. A representative for the company declined to comment.
FWD's latest application marks the Hong Kong-headquartered insurance company's fourth attempt to list on its hometown bourse, and its fifth in total. It last filed an application in Hong Kong in March 2023, following applications in September 2022 and in February 2022. These applications all lapsed after their submissions under lukewarm market conditions.
Outside of Hong Kong, FWD's holding company, PCGI Intermediate, submitted a draft registration statement in June 2021 to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a $3 billion IPO. PCGI later withdrew its IPO plans in December, as Chinese regulators heightened scrutiny of overseas listings.
Founded in 2013, FWD serves approximately 30 million customers across 10 markets, including Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Singapore and Thailand, according to the company. It reported a net profit after tax of $24 million in the full year ended December 2024, marking its first full year of profitability and first positive operating cash flow under the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 17's accounting standards. Its total assets over that period reached $53.7 billion, an increase of around 2 percent from the year prior.
FWD is majority owned by Pacific Century Group, Li's investment company, which has interests in finance, technology and property. A son of Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong's wealthiest person, Li established FWD after announcing he would acquire Dutch banking giant ING Group's insurance and pension units in Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand in late 2012. Since then, FWD has expanded through a series of investments and acquisitions across Asia, while attracting backers such as global reinsurer Swiss Re, Singaporean sovereign wealth fund GIC and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments).
Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing.
Through Pacific Century, Li has also developed a portfolio of tech investments, including Singapore-headquartered insurtech Bolttech and fintech group MoneyHero. Li serves as chairman of Bolttech, which raised an undisclosed Series C funding round last December at a valuation of $2.1 billion. Bolttech's group CEO, Rob Schimek, was previously managing director and group chief commercial officer at FWD.
FWD's renewed IPO ambitions have emerged as recent listings in Hong Kong have defied geopolitical tensions and market uncertainties to hit unprecedented highs. Chinese billionaire Robin Zeng's battery manufacturing giant Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL) raised HK$35.7 billion ($4.6 billion) by selling 135.6 million shares at HK$263 apiece, the top of their marketed range, according to exchange filings – making the IPO the world's largest of the year so far. Shares soared as much as 17% on the CATL's first trading day Tuesday, despite the U.S. Department of Defense's January decision to blacklist the battery maker for allegedly aiding Chinese military advances. (CATL, which is also listed in Shenzhen, has denied these allegations.)
Other listings include Mixue Group, China's largest bubble tea chain, which listed in early March. Mixue raised HK$3.45 billion ($444 million) from its IPO, which attracted a raft of cornerstone investors, including Chinese investment firms Hongshan and Boyu Capital, as well as existing backers Hillhouse and Meituan-backed fund Long-Z. Shares jumped 43.2% in the company's hotly anticipated debut, reaching a market cap of $14.1 billion and lifting the wealth of Mixue's cofounders, the billionaire brothers Zhang Hongchao and Hongfu, to over $5.6 billion each, per Forbes estimates. In February, rival milk tea franchise Guming raised HK$1.8 billion ($233 million) in its Hong Kong listing, making its founder Wang Yun'an a billionaire.
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