SCMP: JD Log IPO expands e-commerce empire of China’s largest retail company

The South China Morning Post reports:

– After the JD Health IPO and a secondary listing for JD.com, China’s second-largest e-commerce firm now plans a public offering of its logistics unit

– With its fleet of delivery workers, drones and autonomous vehicles, JD.com has often been compared to Amazon

Richard Liu Qiangdong, the billionaire founder of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, has applied to list his company’s delivery arm JD Logistics in Hong Kong, which will be the third public offering of his business empire within nine months.

he company has not specified the amount it hopes to raise, but JD.com is expected to raise about US$5 billion by floating shares of the logistics unit, with the total value of JD Logistics possibly reaching US$40 billion, according to a report by Bloomberg. That would make it China’s second-most valuable delivery company after Shenzhen-listed SF Express. This comes after JD.com’s US$4.5 billion secondary listing last June and a US$3.5 billion IPO by JD Health in December.

At the heart of JD Logistics is its 240,000-person strong army of deliverymen and service crew members, whom Liu has publicly referred to as “my brothers”. But the company also seeks to differentiate itself from the competition by selling itself as a more technologically advanced logistics company.

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Our previous coverage is here: “IPOs, what IPOs? Prepping for JD Logistics’ multi-billion benchmark deal“.