Zhongji Innolight Co., a Chinese manufacturer of optical transceivers, has successfully priced its Hong Kong listing below the maximum offered, raising HK$53.4 billion ($6.8 billion). This makes it Hong Kong's largest first-time share sale in seven years. The company priced 54.5 million shares at HK$980 apiece, as confirmed by a stock exchange filing on Tuesday.
The initial offering was anticipated to raise at least $8 billion, with reports suggesting shares would be sold at up to HK$1,010 ($128.81) each. This price represented a 13.2% discount to the company’s Shenzhen-listed stock's closing price on the preceding Monday. The deal is the largest in Hong Kong since Alibaba Group's $12.9 billion listing in 2019 and Asia's second-largest this year, following Chinese chipmaker CXMT Corp’s $8.6 billion IPO on Shanghai’s STAR market.
Zhongji Innolight plans to allocate the listing proceeds towards research and development, expanding global production, strengthening its supply chain, strategic acquisitions, and general working capital. The company cited consultant CIC, stating it has been the world's largest optical interconnect solutions provider by revenue for five consecutive years since 2021. Its optical transceivers are crucial for data centers, cloud networks, and AI computing systems, turning electrical signals into light signals to enable high-volume data transmission through fiber-optic cables.
The company's financials show significant growth, with revenue rising 192% to 19.5 billion yuan ($2.9 billion) and profit jumping 274% to 6.32 billion yuan in the three months ended March 31. For the full year 2025, profit surged 116% to 11.58 billion yuan on revenue of 38.24 billion yuan. The United States represented Zhongji’s primary market, accounting for 61.7% of its revenue in the first quarter of this year, an increase from 57.3% for all of 2025. This deal contributes to Hong Kong's new listings, which have raised $33.8 billion so far in 2026, more than double the $16.4 billion raised in the same period in 2025, marking the highest year-to-date total since 2021.
Although Zhongji Innolight was added to the U.S. Department of Defense's list of Chinese military companies on June 8, the company has stated that its products are intended for commercial technology, not military use, and has not observed any material cancellations or delays in customer orders since being listed.
