Chinese video streaming service iQiyi debuts on Nasdaq
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E-mail Xinhua, March 30, 2018
Chinese video streaming service iQiyi Inc. rang the Nasdaq Stock Market opening bell on Thursday in celebration of its initial public offering (IPO).
![Li Yanhong (C-R), chair and CEO of Baidu, Gong Yu (C-L), CEO of iQiyi, and other guests pose for a group photo outside Nasdaq Marketsite in New York, the United States, on March 29, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]](http://images.china.cn/site1007/2018-03/30/2ceb16ee-2806-4ecc-8281-0cf986ad5593.jpg "Li Yanhong (C-R), chair and CEO of Baidu, Gong Yu (C-L), CEO of iQiyi, and other guests pose for a group photo outside Nasdaq Marketsite in New York, the United States, on March 29, 2018. [Photo/Xinhua]")
The company, trading under the ticker symbol of "IQ", priced its initial public offering of 125,000,000 American depositary shares (ADSs), at 18.00 U.S. dollars per ADS for a total offering size of approximately 2.25 billion U.S. dollars, assuming the underwriters do not exercise their option to purchase additional ADSs.
Each ADS represents seven Class A Ordinary Shares of the Company.
IQiyi started trading at 18.20 U.S. dollars per share on Thursday, climbing 1.11 percent from its pricing, and was traded at 17.80 dollars apiece around midday.
The fund raised will be used mainly to expand and enhance iQiyi's content offerings, and to strengthen the company's technologies, said its prospectus.
"Content and technology are the twin pillars of the company. We'll invest more in original content creation and also apply advanced technologies including big data and artificial intelligence to improve our platform," Wang Xiaohui, iQiyi's Chief Content Officer, told Xinhua on Thursday.
"We want to build 'China's online Disney'," he said.
According to third-party research firm iResearch, iQiyi is the largest internet video streaming service in China in terms of user time spent and average total MAUs (monthly active users) in 2017. As of February 28, 2018, the number of iQiyi's subscribing members reached 60.1 million, over 98-percent of whom were paying subscribing members.
Goldman Sachs (Asia) L.L.C., Credit Suisse (USA) LLC and Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated are acting as joint bookrunners for the offering.
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