Canaan Creative may apply for IPO in the US after domestic listing failed

On January 8, according to Bloomberg, cryptocurrency miner Canaan is currently considering listing in the United States after its IPO (initial public offering) plan in Hong Kong was shelved.

It was previously reported that Canaan Creative officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on May 15, 2018. The road to its IPO in Hong Kong that began was rather bumpy, with the fundraising amount dropping from US$1 billion to US$400 million, and eventually expiring on November 15, six months after submission.

If the news of the intention to go public in the United States is true, it may confirm the news of the previous failure of the listing in Hong Kong.

The other two major mining companies, Ebang International and Bitmain, also went public in Hong Kong in June and September this year respectively. After its application expired, Ebang International resubmitted its listing application on December 20. Currently, the IPO applications of these two mining companies are also awaiting approval from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Canaan Creative's IPO plan has been around for a long time and has suffered repeated setbacks in the past.

As early as 2016, Canaan Creative attempted to be listed on the Chinese A-share market. In June 2016, GEM stock Luyi Tong (300423) announced that it intended to acquire 100% of Canaan Creative's equity for RMB 3.06 billion. However, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange subsequently inquired about the transaction three times because of the suspicion of "backdoor listing", the target's extremely high performance commitments, and the hidden relationship between the top five customers and the company. Ultimately, the acquisition was forced to be terminated.

In August of the following year, Canaan Creative submitted an application for listing on the New Third Board (National Equities Exchange and Quotations), but the application was abandoned again after three rounds of feedback and inquiries from the National Equities Exchange and Quotations and securities firms.

According to public information, Canaan Creative was established in Beijing in April 2013 and is the manufacturer of the Avalon series of cryptocurrency mining machines. According to its prospectus, Canaan Creative's global Bitcoin mining machine shipments in 2017 are expected to total 294,500 units, accounting for 20.9% of the global market share in terms of shipments; and 19.5% of the global market share calculated by computing power, ranking second in the world in terms of Bitcoin mining machine manufacturers.

Canaan attributes its revenue to four main aspects: system product (bitcoin mining machine) sales, maintenance services and parts sales, chip sales and others. Among them, system product sales revenue is absolutely dominant. This part of revenue mainly comes from the sales of system products - AvalonMiner, and the revenue share has also increased from 74.9% in 2015 to 99.1% in 2017.

Odaily Planet Daily contacted Canaan Creative regarding this matter, but has not received a response so far.