(Bloomberg) -- Black Sesame International Holding Ltd. has priced its Hong Kong initial public offering at the low end of the marketed range, people with knowledge of the situation said, as the recent global selloff in stocks piles extra pressure on new share issues.
Black Sesame, which designs chips for autonomous driving systems and is backed by Xiaomi Corp., was offering 37 million shares at HK$28 to HK$30.30 each. At HK$28 per share, the IPO raised HK$1.04 billion ($133 million), still making it one of the biggest in Hong Kong this year.
Books for the deal were covered as of Friday, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified because the matter is private.
Black Sesame is set to announce its offer price Wednesday, according to its prospectus, and shares are due to start trading Thursday.
A representative for Black Sesame declined to comment.
At the bottom of the price range, about 7% of shares on offer are going to two cornerstone investors — a subsidiary of Guangzhou Automobile Group Co. and an investment unit of auto-parts supplier Ningbo Joyson Electronic Co.
Wuhan-based Black Sesame, which was founded in 2016, also counts Tencent Holdings Ltd. and entities controlled by auto makers Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. and SAIC Motor Corp. as shareholders. The company posted a net loss of 4.9 billion yuan ($686 million) last year on revenue of 312 million yuan.
Black Sesame will be the second company to debut under Hong Kong’s listing regime known as Chapter 18C, which sets lower thresholds for specialist-tech businesses such as those in AI and chipmaking. QuantumPharm Inc., which bills itself as an AI-powered research-and-development platform for drugmakers, listed in June.
Hong Kong IPOs have raised $2.31 billion so far this year, down 12.5% from the same period in 2023.
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