Zhang Yang

nicolezyyy@163.com

EYE clinic operator C-MER Eye Care Holdings Ltd. went public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, with Tencent’s chairman Pony Ma among its cornerstone investors, according to a press conference held Thursday.

It is reported that the company’s retail offering was oversubscribed by over 1,600 times, marking the highest retail participation in 11 years for Hong Kong IPOs worth at least US$50 million.

Headquartered in Hong Kong, the company set up an optometry hospital in Shenzhen under CEPA (Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement) in 2013. The hospital is the first Hong Kong privately owned hospital on the Chinese mainland.

Dennis Lam, director of C-MER (Shenzhen) Dennis Lam Eye Hospital, said the company’s second eye hospital on the Chinese mainland will come into use in Beijing on Tuesday. The hospital, occupying an area of over 4,600 square meters, will have two foreign ophthalmologists and 12 Chinese ophthalmologists.

“Apart from the Beijing hospital, we also plan to open two more eye hospitals on the Chinese mainland this year,” Lam said, adding that one of the two new hospitals will probably be located in an eastern city such as Shanghai or Hangzhou and the other might be located in one of the central and western cities.

According to Lam, the company also plans to acquire three eye hospitals in mainland cities and set up two satellite clinics in suburban areas in Shenzhen.

The company’s eye hospital in Shenzhen ranked third in the private ophthalmic service market in Guangdong in terms of revenue in 2016.