Hong Kong — China Literature surged 86% in its Hong Kong debut after Tencent’s online books unit raised HK$8.3bn ($1.1bn) in the largest tech coming-out party for the city since 2007. The stock finished Wednesday at HK$102.40, almost double its HK$55 initial public offering (IPO) price and conferring a value of almost $12bn on the debutante. The company, spun out from Tencent Holdings, notched the best first-day performance of any IPO that raised $500m or more in 2017. China Literature is the country’s biggest publisher of e-books, offering a similar business model to Amazon.com’s Kindle Store. The Shanghai-based company intends to invest more on data to analyse user preferences; work with Tencent’s WeChat and QQ messaging giants to make reading more sociable; and convert popular titles into anime, movies or games in collaboration with Tencent. Its stellar first-day showing may now spur Tencent to consider floating other parts of its empire. China’s second-largest company is already...
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