Yatsen Holding Ltd., the parent company of C-Beauty unicorn Perfect Diary, raised $617 million in a US IPO, valuing the company at $7.82 billion.

WHO: Founded in 2016, Guangzhou-based Yatsen Holding Limited is the holding company that owns the unicorn makeup brand Perfect Diary as well as Little Ondine and Abby’s Choice. Leveraging its digitally native direct-to-customer business model, the company has built a platform with core capabilities that disrupt every part of the traditional beauty industry value chain and deliver greater value to its customers. It reaches and engages customers directly both online and offline, with an expansive presence across all major e-commerce, social, and content platforms in China.

WHY: The company plans to use the proceeds from the IPO for business operations, potential strategic investments and acquisitions, development of data analytics technology, product development, and offline store network expansion.

DETAILS:

• Yatsen Holding sold 58.75 million American depositary shares at $10.50 each. The shares closed at $18.40 on November 19 in New York, giving the company a market value of $7.82 billion and raising $617 million in a US initial public offering.
• According to Yatsen’s disclosures, Perfect Diary was the only color cosmetic brand to have gross merchandising volume (GMV) of 100 million yuan ($15.2 million) on Tmall for each month in 2019 and the first nine months of 2020.
• The company says it has a fan base of 48 million people and served 23.5 million direct-to-consumer customers in the first nine months of 2020. About 91% of gross sales in that period were generated through online channels such as WeChat and Tmall. Yatsen also has a network of more than 200 offline retail stores.
• According to its prospectus, Yatsen swung to a net loss of 1.2 billion yuan ($170.4 million) in the first nine months of 2020 from net income of 29.1 million yuan ($4.4 million) a year earlier. Its revenues increased to 3.27 billion yuan ($497.5 million) from 1.89 billion yuan ($287.5 million) over the same period last year.
• Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC, and China International Capital Corporation Hong Kong Securities Limited are acting as joint book-runners for this offering. Tiger Brokers (NZ) Limited, China Renaissance Securities (Hong Kong) Limited, and Futu Inc. are acting as co-managers for this offering.
• The IPO comes as US regulators push ahead with a plan that could lead to the delisting of Chinese companies from the country’s stock exchanges if they don’t comply with regulators’ auditing rules.
• In October Yatsen bought skincare brand Galenic from French group Pierre Fabre for an undisclosed sum.