Ebang International, a Chinese Bitcoin mining hardware maker, has officially approached the United States for its initial public offering (IPO).
According to the F-1 form filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Friday, the company is seeking to raise $100 million, a tenth of its previous failed target of $1 billion from going public in Hong Kong.
The offering will be for Class A ordinary shares with a face value of HK$0.001 ($ 0.00013) per share.
If approved, the Hangzhou-based company will list its stocks under the ticker EBON on either the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or Nasdaq.
Hong Kong-based AMTD Global Markets Limited and U.S.-based Loop Capital Markets LLC are the official joint underwriters for the IPO.
Ebang is one of the top Bitcoin mining hardware makers and, according to reports, the official filing came after the company filed confidentially with the US regulator in February.
Late last year, Canaan Creative, a market competitor of Ebang, went public in the US, but the offering was dull as the company managed to raise $90 million, in the lower end of the offering.
Bitmain, the leading ASIC-based miner manufacturer, is also eying to go public in the US. The company has reportedly filed a confidential prospect with the SEC, however, it’s not officially confirmed yet.
Going public when the numbers are not impressive
Ebang’s SEC filing also detailed that the company recorded $109 million in revenue last year, falling significantly from $319 million the previous year. The slumped figure turned a profit of $24.4 million in 2018 to a loss of $30.6 million last year.
Notably, 82 percent of Ebang’s last year’s revenue came from designing and selling the ASIC chips.
“The significant drop in the Bitcoin price is expected to have a negative effect on the value of our bitcoin mining machine inventory and incentivize us to increase credit sales,” the filing stated.
However, the market is expecting a bull run in the Bitcoin prices with the upcoming halving of mining rewards in the next couple of weeks.
[image: Pixabay]
