PING An Insurance’s OneConnect Financial Technology plans to launch a U.S. initial public offering (IPO) for about US$500 million yesterday, Bloomberg News quoted sources with knowledge of the matter as saying yesterday, reducing both its target offering size and valuation in a rare “down round.”

The unit of China’s biggest insurer by market value, Ping An Insurance Group Co. of China Ltd., is looking for a valuation of between US$4.5 billion and US$5.5 billion in its long-awaited public offering, said the sources.

However, that is well below the company’s US$7.5 billion valuation last year when it raised US$750 million in its maiden funding round, potentially making for a rare down round — a fall in valuation following a new investment — of a tech-related firm.

OneConnect, which provides technology solutions to small and medium-sized financial institutions, was eyeing a valuation of about US$8 billion and an IPO of up to US$1 billion, sources told Reuters in June.

It changed the listing venue to New York from China’s Hong Kong a few months ago in the hope of achieving a higher valuation, previous media reports said, with protests in Hong Kong making markets jittery.

According to its IPO prospectus, OneConnect had revenues of 1.55 billion yuan (US$218 million) in the first nine months of 2019, up 72 percent from the same period a year earlier, but losses widened to 1 billion yuan from 579 million yuan.

Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are among the main banks working on the IPO.

The shares will start trading Dec. 13, said the sources.

(SD-Agencies)