The IPO Buzz: WeRide of China Taps the Brakes – IPO to Price Next Week

By Jan Paschal

Not tonight. WeRide (WRD Proposed) tapped the brakes today on its IPO – hours ahead of when the Chinese autonomous driving start-up’s deal was scheduled for pricing. WeRide’s IPO has rolled onto next week’s IPO Calendar, according to people familiar with the situation. When it pulls back into the IPO lane, WeRide may be sporting a new look. Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan and CICC (China International Capital Corp.) are the lead joint book-runners. WeRide, best known for its robotaxis in China, had planned to sell 6.45 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) at a price range of $15.50 to $18.50 to raise $109.7 million, according to the prospectus. Each ADS represented three ordinary shares. An existing shareholder, Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany, had penciled in its interest in buying up to $100 million of the IPO. That anchor order signaled that only about $9.7 million in stock might be available to the public. WeRide had also planned to do a $320.5 million private placement of Class A ordinary shares simultaneously with the IPO. IPO pros have given WeRide’s deal a cool reception. The seven-year-old start-up is wildly unprofitable. And its timing is odd. WeRide is planning to go public just as the Biden administration is expected to propose barring Chinese software in autonomous vehicles in the United States in the coming weeks. Some veteran IPO players balked at the price range. These Wall Street pros say the mid-point price of $17.00 isn’t a bargain, considering WeRide’s steep net loss. In 2023, WeRide reported a net loss that was almost five times its revenue.   “They’ve got to start pricing these deals to work,” an IPO pro says. “The (stock) market is doing great. They should be able to get this deal done.” U.S. stocks rallied on Thursday after July data showed that U.S. retail sales rose, relieving fears that the economy was slowing down, according to The Wall Street Journal. The S&P 500 was up 6.6 percent after six days of gains – its best performance in such a span since November 2022, as The WSJ noted. For the record: The S&P 500 climbed 1.6 percent on Thursday, rising for a sixth consecutive session. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite jumped 2.3 percent while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.4 percent or about 550 points.  WeRide, based in Guangzhou, focused on its “firsts” and milestones  in the prospectus,  including: *The only autonomous driving company in the world to obtain test permits for autonomous driving vehicles in four countries – mainland China, its home; the U.S.; the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Singapore. *The first autonomous driving company in the world with products operating and testing in 30 cities across seven countries. The Street’s blasé reaction may have been a wake-up call. Milestones are nice. But making money is the name of the game. (For more information about these companies, please check the IPO Calendar and the individual IPO Profiles found on IPOScoop.com’s website.) Note: Never trade on proposed symbols. They have been known to change and you might buy something on the OTC Bulletin Board. To see what time the NASDAQ IPOs are expected to trade, please log in to: NASDAQTrader.com then scroll down to IPO Message. Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions. Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums) is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.