A Chinese company that runs classes with rosters of thousands of students wants to go public in the United States.
Beijing-based GSX Techedu, which was founded in 2014 to provide Chinese primary and secondary students with live-broadcast courses, filed its initiative public offering prospectus with the US Securities and Exchanges Commission on Wednesday.
In the document, GSX Techedu highlighted its curriculum and proprietary live-broadcasting technology that can enables 100,000 students to join a class simultaneously as key advantages.
The prospectus shows that, on average, 980 students were enrolled in each of GSX’s courses as of the end of this year’s first quarter. That’s a significant boost from the average of 440 students during the same period in 2018.
In all, the platform had 211,002 users at the end of March, while maintaining 522 professional tutors and 169 instructors that the company labels as “top-quality”. At the end of March 2018, GSX had 70,845 users.
The company is already profitable. It generated RMB 19.7 million (USD 2.9 million) in net revenue in 2018, reversing the previous year’s net loss of RMB 87 million.
GSX’s net income for the first three months of 2019 reached RMB 33.9 million, compared with a net loss of RMB 3.6 million incurred in the same period in 2018.
Frost & Sullivan expects gross billings in China’s online education market to reach RMB 696.3Â billion by 2023, according to the prospectus.
GSX’s IPO share price—and hence the amount it plans to raise—remains undecided.
Contact the writer at jingli@kr-asia.com
