Luckin Coffee responded to the rumor that "the fastest Q2 raised US $300 million in IPO in the United States": no news!

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On the afternoon of Feb. 1, Bloomberg reported that Luckin Coffee will conduct a $300 million IPO in the United States as soon as the second quarter. On the news, Luckin Coffee Public Relations Director Zhao Yanyan said: "Sorry, I didn't get the news!"

This is also the second time in half a month that Luckin Coffee has heard the news of IPO, but the place of listing has changed from Hong Kong to the United States half a month ago.

Investment banks have begun to prepare information for Luckin Coffee about IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, according to EqualOcean.

At that time, the media also speculated through Luckin Coffee's registration of a Hong Kong company and the appointment of a new CFO with a deep banking and investment background that the company was preparing for IPO in Hong Kong.

According to Luckin Coffee, Reinout Schakel, the company's new chief financial officer and chief strategy officer, has served as an executive director of Standard Chartered Bank in Hong Kong and has worked at Credit Suisse and PricewaterhouseCoopers for many years, with more than 10 years of experience in equity, debt financing and mergers and acquisitions.

However, Luckin Coffee said at the time that he had no comment on the news of IPO in Hong Kong.

Luckin Coffee, a Chinese coffee chain, has begun work on a US listing as soon as the second quarter of this year, raising up to $300m, Bloomberg News reported, citing sources.

It was reported in the middle of last month that the listing arrangement bank was preparing Lucky's IPO in Hong Kong. Although it was later analyzed that Ruixing was "too young" and might not meet the requirements of the HKEx IPO, it also indirectly hinted that the funds raised by the company in 2018 were expected to be exhausted between 2019 and 2020, and it was difficult to find the next round of financing this year. Selling shares through IPO and selling to retail investors was the only strategy, and Luckin Coffee's listing plan was already clear.

Ruixing officially started operation in January last year, starting with an online platform for just over a year, boasting that there is no physical storefront, and relying on a large number of subsidies and convenient delivery business model to quickly seize the coffee market in the Chinese market. Last year, it opened more than 2000 stores, and plans to open another 2500 this year. At present, Lucky's latest valuation is 2.2 billion US dollars (about 14.8 billion yuan), which belongs to the "unicorn" class enterprise.

Ruixing opened more than 2073 stores in just one year, sold 89.68 million cups of coffee to 12.54 million consumers, claimed that the repurchase rate was more than 50% within three months, and even forced Starbucks to cooperate with Alibaba, and began to imitate Lucky's delivery service ──, which immediately set off a coffee takeout craze in China, and everyone was watching to see if Chinese Luckin Coffee could beat Starbucks in the United States.

Of course, to achieve such a result, of course, it depends on a large number of subsidies to attract users to buy lucky coffee at low prices or even free of charge. At the same time, the company raised round after round of financing, raising $200m from the original round An in July, with a valuation of $1 billion. In less than half a year, Lucky raised $200m in round B in December, with a valuation rising to $2.2 billion. Rival Starbucks currently has a market capitalization of about $78 billion.

In mid-January 2019, it was unexpectedly reported that Luckin Coffee planned to conduct an IPO in Hong Kong. Although it has not been officially confirmed, such listing rumors are usually very credible. Apart from the outflow of internal staff, many of them are deliberately flowed out by the authorities to test the popularity of the market.

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