CHINA’S largest provider of on-demand online services, Meituan-Dianping, has tapped Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley to work on a Hong Kong float that could see it list as early as later this year, five sources with knowledge of the move said.

Meituan-Dianping, an online platform for ordering food and booking movies and restaurants, has recently started preparatory work, aided by the three Wall Street banks, for the initial public offering (IPO), said the sources.

No formal mandate to investment banks for managing the IPO has been awarded yet, they said.

The company, formed in 2015 from the US$15-billion merger of Groupon-like Meituan and Yelp-like Dianping, is looking to benefit from the bull run in technology stocks, said the sources.

The Hong Kong-listed shares of existing investor Tencent Holdings Ltd., for instance, have risen about 90 percent over the past year, outpacing a 51-percent rise in the benchmark Hang Seng Index.

In October, Meituan-Dianping was valued at US$30 billion following a US$4-billion funding round led by Tencent. The sources said it was too early to determine an IPO valuation as discussions are still at a preliminary stage.

Reuters reported in November that Meituan-Dianping, which offers a broad range of services including travel packages, was considering an IPO in the United States as soon as this year.

However, the company has shifted focus to Hong Kong, the sources said, as the city’s exchange operator is about to allow dual-class shares, which potentially allow founders to weight share voting rights in their favor.

Led by serial entrepreneur Wang Xing, Meituan-Dianping’s backers also include Sequoia Capital Ltd., Singaporean state investors GIC Pte Ltd. and Temasek Holdings (Pte) Ltd., as well as DST Global and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. (SD-Agencies)