China's education firm OneSmart makes NYSE debut

NEW YORK - China's premium K-12 after-school education service provider OneSmart International Education Group Limited debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Wednesday, trading under the ticker symbol of "ONE."

OneSmart priced its initial public offering (IPO) of 16,300,000 American Depositary Shares (ADSs) at $11.00 per ADS, for a total offering size of $179.3 million, assuming the underwriters do not exercise their option to purchase additional ADSs. Each ADS represents 40 Class A ordinary shares of the Company.

The underwriters have been granted an option, exercisable within 30 days from the date of the final prospectus, to purchase up to 2,445,000 additional ADSs at $11.00 per ADS.

Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and UBS investment Bank are the joint book runners for the offering.

OneSmart, the NYSE's fourth Chinese IPO in 2018, started trading at $11.00 per share on Wednesday, the same as its IPO price, and was traded at $10.16 apiece around midday.

"Listing on the NYSE will become a new start for OneSmart's further development," Xi Zhang, founder and CEO of OneSmart, told Xinhua after the opening bell.

"Relying on the rapidly growing Chinese education market, OneSmart will have a good opportunity to grow into an excellent education company, not only in China, but also worldwide," he added.

Founded in 2008, OneSmart was the largest premium K-12 after-school education service provider in China in terms of revenue in 2016 and 2017, according to Frost & Sullivan.

The company operated a nationwide network of 225 study centers across 42 cities in China as of Nov 30, 2017, according to the prospectus.

OneSmart's revenue was $311.3 million in 2017, an increase of 34.6 percent compared with the year before, while its net income was $36.8 million in 2017, up 30.3 percent from a year ago, the company said in its prospectus.