UPS - SF Eyes Hong Kong IPO En Route To Joining Global Logistics Big Leagues | Benzinga
Key Takeaways:
- SF Holding has applied to list in Hong Kong, aiming to use the city as a financing springboard for its global expansion
- The Chinese logistics giant’s profit rose 32% last year to 8.2 billion yuan
By Lau Chi Hang
In China, telling someone you’re "SF-ing” them” has become synonymous for sending them a package, even for people not using leading delivery service operator S.F. Holding Co. Ltd. The company is arguably the best-run integrated logistics service provider in China. Now, it’s hoping to replicate that success globally, reflected by its recent filing for a Hong Kong listing to tap the international capital market.
SF founder Wang Wei is legendary in China for a rags-to-riches story that saw him rise from origins as a goods smuggler to head of a company worth more than $20 billion. The son of highly educated parents, Wang moved to Hong Kong from Shanghai in the mid-1970s. When his parents were unable to find good jobs and struggled to make ends meet, Wang abandoned his studies after middle school and started working.
Despite his lack of education and family support, he set up SF across the border in the city of Shunde in Guangdong province in 1993, well before China’s e-commerce explosion, in an era when delivery services were still dominated by the national post office. He launched his first Hong Kong branch in a run-down store on Portland Street in the city’s working-class Kowloon district.
As Hong Kong businessmen began flocking across the border to Guangdong’s Pearl River Delta to set up factories, demand for sending documents and goods between Hong Kong and China grew rapidly. That demand got a huge shot in the arm with China’s e-commerce explosion that began in the early 2000s with the rise of names like Alibaba.
Fast forward to the present, where Wang’s diligence and China’s economic takeoff have transformed SF from a six-person operation to a multinational with 103 aircraft and 200,000 vehicles, making it a dominant presence in Asia’s ...