Zhongji Innolight suffered a rocky start in its highly anticipated Hong Kong stock market debut on Thursday, as the Chinese firm felt the impact of a global downturn in investor sentiment towards the artificial intelligence sector.
By the midday break, the company’s shares had slipped 7.4 per cent below their issue price to trade at HK$908.
The Chinese firm – a leading producer of optical transceivers used in AI data centres – had earlier completed Hong Kong’s biggest initial public offering of the year, raising HK$53.4 billion (US$6.8 billion) at a market capitalisation of over HK$1 trillion.
But the listing has coincided with a global sell-off of AI-related stocks, with Innolight pricing the IPO at HK$980 per share – below its upper marketing limit of HK$1,010.
The company’s share price in Shenzhen had slumped 16 per cent since the launch of its H-share public offering as of Wednesday, closing at 951 yuan per share. That narrowed the discount between its new H shares and existing A shares from 20 per cent to just 11 per cent.
