Hesai Group, a Chinese provider of lidar products for autonomous vehicles and other applications, announced terms for its IPO on Thursday.
The Shanghai, China-based company plans to raise $162 million by offering 9 million ADSs at a price range of $17 to $19. Insiders intend to purchase $2 million worth of ADSs in the offering (1% of the deal). At the midpoint of the proposed range, Hesai Group would command a fully diluted market value of $2.4 billion.
Operating through subsidiaries including Hesai Technology, the company provides lidar products for passenger or commercial vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), autonomous vehicle fleets providing passenger and freight mobility services, and other applications such as last-mile delivery robots, street sweeping robots, and logistics robots in restricted areas. The company's initial focus was on high-performance laser sensors used in natural gas and other industries, but it shifted its primary business to lidar products in 2016. Hesai shipped over 103,000 lidar units between 2017 and December 31, 2022, and shipped over 80,400 LiDAR units in aggregate in 2022, primarily for ADAS customers. Its top ADAS customers include Li Auto, Jidu, and Lotus, and as of December 31, 2021, 12 of the 15 top global autonomous driving companies used Hesai for their primary lidar solution.
Hesai Group was founded in 2014 and booked $156 million in revenue for the 12 months ended September 30, 2022. It plans to list on the Nasdaq under the symbol HSAI. Goldman Sachs (Asia), Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Huatai Securities are the joint bookrunners on the deal. It is expected to price during the week of February 6, 2023.
