Chinese short-video giant Kuaishou taps global debt market with US dollar, yuan bonds

Chinese short-video platform Kuaishou Technology is pitching its debut offshore bond sale to professional investors, joining a wave of domestic tech companies raising funds in the global debt market.

The Beijing-based company, which is offering senior unsecured notes in US dollars and Chinese yuan, said on Wednesday that it planned to use the proceeds from the issuance for general corporate purposes.

The two offerings were separate and not inter-conditional, meaning each could proceed independently of the other, according to a stock exchange filing on Wednesday. Key terms, including size and issue dates, have not been decided.

Ratings agencies S&P Global and Moody’s both assigned a “stable” rating to Kuaishou’s outlook.

Kuaishou is China’s second-largest short-form video platform and the third-largest mobile app in the country by total user time spent, with 416 million daily active users in the quarter ending last September.

Despite fierce competition from rivals such as ByteDance’s Douyin and Tencent Holdings’ WeChat video, Kuaishou’s daily active user numbers continued to grow, and the amount of time users spent on the platform remained steady, according to S&P Global Ratings.