Leading payment-based technology platform,
Providing payment and business services to merchants and consumers,
Offer price between HK$12.64 and HK$16.64 per share
YEAHKA LIMITED (“Yeahka” or the “Company”, together with its subsidiaries, the “Group”, stock code: 9923.HK), a leading payment-based technology platform in China, announced the proposed listing of its shares on the Main Board of The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited (“SEHK”) today.
YEAHKA LIMITED plans to offer an aggregate of 98,724,000 Offer Shares under the Global Offering (subject to the Over-allotment Option), consisting of 88,851,200 International Offer Shares (subject to adjustment and the Over-allotment Option) and 9,872,800 Hong Kong Offer Shares (subject to adjustment), at a price range between HK$12.64 and HK$16.64 per share.
The public offering will open at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 and close at 12:00 noon on Monday, May 25, 2020 in Hong Kong. Dealings in shares on SEHK are expected to commence on Monday, June 1, 2020, with the stock code 9923.HK in board lots of 400 shares each.
CLSA Capital Markets Limited, Nomura International (Hong Kong) Limited and ABCI Capital Limited are the Joint Sponsors.
Leading payment-based technology platform for customers
Yeahka is a leading payment-based technology platform. The Group is one of the only 16 payment service providers that were granted both the national bank card acquiring license and mobile phone payment license. The sizable and rapidly growing payment service customer base together with the increasing transaction volume have formed the backbone of the Group’s market leading position, and help the Group to generate deep insights of customers. According to Oliver Wyman, the Group is the second largest non-bank independent QR Code payment service provider in China, with a market share of 14.0% in terms of transaction count in 2019. In 2019, the Group has recorded a GPV of approximately RMB1,500.3 billion, growing 92.6% from 2018, surpassing China’s consumer-to-business payment market year-on-year growth rate of 16.3% in 2019. As of December 31, 2019, the Group had approximately 5.3 million active payment service customers, increasing from 3.8 million as of December 31, 2018, and served approximately 367.8 million consumers via payment services in 2019, growing from approximately 141.6 million in 2018.
Leveraging close connection to and deep understanding of customers, as well as innovative
technologies, Yeahka is a pioneer and a leader in extending business services to customers. According to Oliver Wyman, Yeahka is one of the first to develop and provide an integrated technology platform to serve micro and small merchants’ needs for payment and business services in China. As of May 12, 2020, Smart Shopkeeper intelligent ordering machine was the bestselling and the second-bestselling cash register on Tmall and Pinduoduo, respectively. With over five years of experience in the payment services industry in China, the Group has built a reputation and proven track record and been highly recognized in the payment services industry.
Cohesive and innovative service portfolio creating a self-reinforcing ecosystem that empowers digital transformation
There is an increasing demand from customers of all types and sizes for solutions to help generate incremental sales and increase efficiency through digital transformation. Yeahka provides customers with a cohesive portfolio of services that cater to their demand for digital solutions in the areas of payment, business operations, marketing and financial needs. With analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, Yeahka leverages deep insights from various payment scenarios and data to create an ecosystem of cohesive services, which in turn generates more insights and scenarios and further strengthens the Group’s ecosystem, leading to a virtuous cycle. Through the provision of payment services, the Group accumulates multi-faceted data assets that provide valuable insights for the Group to deliver more customized services and better user experience.
Payment services act as Yeahka’s gateway to cross-sell services to customers in industries including retail, wholesale, food and beverage and others. Building upon payment services, the Group combines scenarios and data analytics to provide a cohesive portfolio of intelligent and targeted services that help generate incremental sales and improve operating efficiency. Integrated with payment services, the Group’s merchant SaaS products such as Smart Shopkeeper and Smart Sales provide customers with multiple scenario-specific functionalities, including real-time inventory management, customer relationship management, smart order management, and all-rounded employee management. The Group’s marketing services include customer loyalty program e-tools and a payment-based advertising platform that allows customers to effectively reach their target markets
Rapidly growing customer base built upon strong distribution network with scalable go-to-market approach
Yeahka acquires customer base through payment services, to whom the Group cross-sells technology-enabled business services to extract more value. Through the broad partnership with over 8,000 partners in the distribution channels, the Group has been rapidly expanding customer base nationwide in a cost-effective manner. As of May 12, 2020, the Group’s distribution network has covered 30 provinces and municipalities and over 300 cities in China. The number of active payment service customers has been growing at a CAGR of 80.3% from approximately 1.6 million as of December 31, 2017 to 3.8 million as of December 31, 2018, and further to 5.3 million as of December 31, 2019. Customer acquisition cost declined from RMB34 per customer for the year ended December 31, 2017 to RMB17 per customer for the year ended December 31, 2019.
The differentiated business services enhance user experience and deepen the Group’s relationships with distribution channels and partners. Leveraging rapidly expanding payment service customer base, the Group cross-sells technology-enabled business services at minimal incremental costs. A growing number of payment service customers were converted into the Group’s customers of technology-enabled business services. As of December 31, 2019, over 90% of the Group’s business service customers were converted from payment service customers.
A trusted platform with reliable and robust technology infrastructure driving high operating performance
Yeahka is led by a team of experienced technology professionals with extensive payment and technology background in China. The Group’s research and development expenses increased from RMB24.3 million for the year ended December 31, 2017 to RMB78.4 million for the year ended December 31, 2019, representing a CAGR of 79.6%. As of December 31, 2019, all of the Group’s 199 research and development staff, and 126 product and operation team members, representing 39.3% and 24.9% of the total number of employees, respectively, have expertise in system, infrastructure, large-scale distributed application technology, big data computing technology or artificial intelligence. Leveraging robust technology infrastructure, the Group has developed in-house core technologies and private cloud. The platform securely processes a massive volume of transactions, achieves a high level of automation and stability, and is highly compatible with mainstream payment methods and channels, and easily scalable. Currently, the system is capable of processing over 100 million transactions per day, with a peak processing capability of over 10,000 transactions per second. Yeahka’s proprietary private cloud technology allows for flexibility and dedicated resources to cater to the ever-growing volume and velocity of data that the Group processes and stores.
Backed by capabilities in data analytics and artificial intelligence, the Group has automated various components of business process. The Group deployed machine learning algorithm to automate business workflows, including client onboarding, customer servicing, payment transaction processing, and credit decisioning, allowing it to improve efficiencies, operating leverage and client satisfaction. The Group’s operating expenses as a percentage of revenue has decreased from 55.6% for the year ended December 31, 2017 to 12.2% for the year ended December 31, 2019.
Dynamic and technology-driven risk management
The Group has a well-organized risk management structure. The dedicated risk management team comprises over 15 highly competent analytical professionals and is closely involved in all major aspects of operations. Leveraging the scale of data assets accumulated from payment services, together with data analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities, the Group has constructed a robust and dynamic risk management system. The Group’s sophisticated anti-fraud system automatically analyzes multi-dimensional information to evaluate and minimize fraud exposure. It promptly identifies and intercepts fraudulent and suspicious transactions. In December 2019, the Group’s fraud loss rate, which represents the loss due to transactions denied by cardholders, was 0.000042%. Yeahka has integrated AI-powered graphic recognition and bio-recognition technology into payment services and merchant SaaS products to enhance security. The Group has also applied image and video recognition to enable automated real time customer verification.
Visionary and seasoned management, with proven track record and strong shareholder support
Yeahka’s management team commands strong operational experience in China technology powerhouses, and extensive expertise in payment services. The Group’s chairman and chief executive officer, Mr. Liu Yingqi was the general manager of TenPay since its incorporation. During his tenure, Tenpay grew to become the second largest online payment company in China. The Group’s chief architect, Mr. Luo Xiaohui, worked at Tencent Technology (Shenzhen) Co. Ltd over 10 years as its deputy director of Development Center prior to joining the Group.
Furthermore, Yeahka is backed by marquee investors, including Tencent, Recruit Holdings, Adams Street Funds, IVP Funds, Greycroft Growth L.P. and e.ventures Growth L.P.. In 2012, when the Group was at early-stage of development, Tencent provided support in customer acquisitions. Amongst others, the Group was provided with promotional resources for payment service business. For instance, in July 2015, the Group collaborated with Recruit Holdings to introduce Smart Shopkeeper, an integrated restaurant management solution; in March 2019, the Group has also formed RYK Capital Partners Limited, an investment platform with Recruit Holdings, dedicated to co-invest in areas that complement to payment and technology-enabled business services.
Mr. Liu Yingqi, Chairman, chief executive officer and Executive Director of YEAHKA LIMITED , said, “the value proposition of YEAHKA LIMITED is a cohesive ecosystem that enables seamless, convenient and reliable payment transactions between merchants and consumers, complemented with a rich variety of value-added services. Looking forward, we will continue to expand customer base for payment services, and convert them into customers of technology-enabled business services, while deepen collaboration with sales agents, sales partners and SaaS partners and explore cooperation with more distribution partners in China and overseas; enhance and expand technology-enabled business services to enable digital transformation of customers’ business and operations; continue to invest in infrastructure, technologies, analytics and artificial intelligence to ensure strong data processing capability and system security; recruit, cultivate and retain talents to maintain our innovative capability, so as to continuously create value for merchants and consumers.”
About YEAHKA LIMITED
YEAHKA LIMITED is a leading payment-based technology platform in China providing payment and business services to merchants and consumers. As of December 31, 2019, Yeahka was one of the only 16 payment service providers that were granted both the national bank card acquiring license and mobile phone payment license. The Company has one of the largest third-party payment service customer bases in China, and it is growing rapidly. According to Oliver Wyman, Yeahka is the second largest non-bank independent QR code payment service provider in China, with approximately 14.0% market share in terms of transaction count in 2019. Leveraging the customer base and data assets acquired from payment services, the Company has extended its product and service offerings to technology-enabled business services, which have enabled the Company to develop an end-to-end ecosystem which facilitates transactions between merchants and consumers and creates value for merchants and consumers.
