November 27, 2018 – BabyTree, China’s largest and most active maternity & child (M&C) - focused community platform was successfully listed on the main board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It set the offer price at HK$6.8 per share, with 500 shares per board lot and international offering totaled 250,323,000 shares. The stock code is HK 1761, elaborated as “June 1^st (Children’s Day) together” in Chinese. At 9:30 a.m. on November 27, Wang Huainan, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of BabyTree started the trading day at the market open ceremony by striking the “Gong”, with the accompany of representatives from shareholders, partners and customers. Wang Qunbin, Chief Executive Officer of Fosun International, and Chen Qiyu, Co-President of Fosun International and Executive Director of BabyTree have attended the listing ceremony. The listing of China’s largest M&C-focused community platform in Hong Kong signifies the enhancement of Fosun’s position as a family-focused ecosystem for young families over the years.

The establishment of the innovative service for the young family community represents a great leap forward for the M&C ecosystem

BabyTree’s list of renowned strategic investors has become one of the crucial factors that has drawn extensive market attention. Looking back at its financing history, BabyTree has always been empowering its strategic potentials and expanding its business. The tremendous supports from various powerful strategic shareholders, including Fosun International, Alibaba and TAL Education have offered the company with resources to promote its business potentials and expand its business.

Fosun, being BabyTree’s leading investor since 2016, takes initiatives in the M&C industry along with the introduction of favorable policies such as the “two-child policy”. Fosun has always been dedicated to creating a happiness ecosystem for global families fulfilling the needs in health, happiness and wealth. Fosun is optimistic towards the prospects of M&C industry, which is a significant part of Fosun’s family-focused ecosystem. Guo Guangchang, Chairman of Fosun International, said the collaboration has revitalized the family-focused ecosystem and resulted in a win-win situation by connecting with Fosun’s various resources.    

Wang Qunbin, CEO of Fosun International expressed his positive opinions towards BabyTree by saying “Companies that list during the winter are mostly outstanding enterprises” during the listing ceremony. He added that Fosun is not merely a shareholder of BabyTree, but also an important strategic partner that helps accelerate the business upgrade of BabyTree. With a global network, in addition to helping to accelerate BabyTree’s global business development, Fosun further assists BabyTree to expand its business capabilities in the areas of healthcare, household finance, and household travel.  In fact, the C2M (Customer to Maker) collaborations between the two companies and the establishment of JV company to expand into the Internet healthcare industry served as a demonstration of the close partnership and determination to build up the young family service community and realize value-sharing strategy in global M&C family services.  

Leaving aside the market situation, a company remains user-focused

Despite the volatile market situation, the successful listing of BabyTree served a proof of sustained positive sentiment towards China’s M&C industry in the international capital market. The development of China’s M&C market has maintained a strong momentum under the support of favorable policy and economic growth. The domestic birth rate is expected to grow steadily to 13‰ as a result of the two-child policy.    

According to a research report by Frost & Sullivan, the market size of China’s young household consumption has increased with a compound annual growth rate of 15% from 2013 to 2017. Moreover, the young household market is expected to grow further with an expanding and upgraded consumption-driven economy in China.

Being one of the pioneers focusing on M&C online services, BabyTree was founded in 2007 and has been striving to help mothers by providing a platform for them to exchange ideas, make friends, seek advices and obtain solutions in order to ease their confusions and helplessness during the whole process of pregnancy. BabyTree has built its industry-leading reputation and user base after 11 years of persistence in quality services.

In 2017, BabyTree became M&C-focused community platform, boasting a solid foundation of user traffic. It had an average MAU of 139 million. The company’s products such as BabyTree Parenting, WeTime and Meitun Mama have formed a closed-loop parenting ecosystem consisting of community, parenting tools and family-focused e-commerce. With six core business lines of advertising, e-commerce, content payment, early childhood education, household health and family-oriented financial services, the ecosystem satisfies the four essential needs of China’s young families: learning, sharing, recording and shopping.  

Xiaoxiao’s family, the user representative who was invited to join the listing ceremony, can serve as a microcosm of the millions of BabyTree users. Xiaoxiao’s mother changes herself from an overwhelmed “newborn mother” to an "expert mother", who can now produce quality PUGC content back-feeding to other users, and raised two happy daughters with her husband. This naturally-formed “pass-through” user traffic and content regeneration are the core abilities of BabyTree to realize user value and business value.

“Regardless of the market’s ups and downs, there is always a demand for a good company that really cares about the user,” Mr. Wang Huainan, CEO of BabyTree, stated, “We care more about whether we are able to find better opportunities in strategy, branding, talent promotion and industry integration after BabyTree’s debut. Can these opportunities help us to provide better and more comprehensive services for the M&C community? This is why BabyTree wants to go public.”

Technology research and development, investments and acquisitions and global expansion to drive BabyTree’s enchanting post-listing future

BabyTree intended to use the net proceeds from IPO to provide funding in the areas of business expansion, research and development, future investments, acquisitions and strategic alliances, etc. With a long-term and clear strategic development planning, BabyTree’s future business prospects are worth high expectation. First, technology is the core driver in the development of an Internet company. Through an 11-year accumulation of user data, BabyTree now owns the largest business database focusing on M&C business, laying a solid foundation for the big data strategy. By vigorously investing in artificial intelligence research including big data, machine learning, speech recognition, etc., the realization of intelligent, convenient and customized innovative products and services for BabyTree users will be accelerated.

In addition, as the leading company in China's Internet M&C industry, BabyTree has its resources and financial capability to efficiently integrate industrial resources and business through investments, acquisitions and strategic alliances. Therefore, it can further consolidate its advantages in user traffic and barriers to entry in China's M&C markets. Thanks to the advanced technology, service solutions and strong international partnership so as to realize its vision to be a leading player in the global M&C market.

As mentioned by Mr. Wang, “The successful listing also entails heavy responsibilities. BabyTree has witnessed, participated in and influenced the development of M&C industry over the years. Followed by the listing, we shall continue to preserve a sense of passion and love towards the M&C business, while constantly listening to our users and grasping the changing demand of the users. In the next 10 years, BabyTree will continue to expand and upgrade business strategically with an aim to become an outstanding enterprise in the global M&C economy as well as international capital market.”