SHENZHEN-BASED companies have maintained a fast pace of listing shares on the domestic A-share market this year as an increasing number of the city’s tech firms turn to the domestic capital market to fund their expansion plans.

Shares of 18 Shenzhen companies made trading debut on the domestic stock exchanges in the first eight months this year, tying with Shanghai for the first place in the country, according to figures from market intelligence provider Tonghuashun.

The majority of these companies are from emerging industries, such as information technology, artificial intelligence and semiconductor.

From January to August, both Shenzhen and Shanghai added 18 newly listed companies, followed closely by Suzhou in eastern China’s Jiangsu Province and Beijing with 16 and 15, respectively.

The Shenzhen firms raised a total of 25.37 billion yuan (US$3.49 billion) in their initial public offerings, slightly less than the 26.15 billion yuan by Shanghai-based firms.

Seven out of the 18 Shenzhen firms are listed on Shanghai’s NASDAQ-style, tech-focused sci-tech innovation board, nine are traded on the ChiNext growth enterprise market and two on the main board of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange,  Tonghuashun data showed.

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