Shenzhen | Smartphone maker heads for Shanghai

Shenzhen Transsion Holdings Co., whose mobile handsets outsell iPhone and Galaxy smartphones in Africa, is planning an initial public offering on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star Board to raise about 3.01 billion yuan ($423 million).
Transsion, known as the “King of Africa” on the continent, according to the filing on Monday, has overtaken Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. as the largest mobile phone maker there, tapping into a huge and fast-growing market.
Since founding the Tecno Mobile brand in 2006, founder Zhu Zhaojiang has overseen an expansion that now claims a 48.7% market share in Africa, according to the filing. Transsion shipped 94.44 million mobile phones to Africa in 2018, out of a total of 124 million global shipments.
The company plans to issue as many as 80 million A-shares in the IPO and will set the price on Sept. 17. Proceeds will be used to pay for mobile phone manufacturing base projects and research and development, the filing said.
The Star market is China’s latest initiative to entice companies to list at home. Since it launched in the middle of this year, 29 companies have listed with an average eye-popping gain of more than 150% from their IPO prices, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. MDT/Bloomberg