时政新闻学英语之46：美团上市，市值近4000亿

本文选自Chinadaily，原文链接见Meituan makes robust stock debut in Hong Kong。

Chinese tech company Meituan Dianping made a splash（溅起） in its stock market debut（首秀）, closing up 5.29 percent on Thursday, giving it a market value of nearly HK$400 billion ($51 billion), wallstreetcn.com reported.

Wang Xing, chairman and CEO of Meituan Dianping, and Qiu Xuexue, a member of the company's delivery staff（美团骑士）, strike a gong（锣） at the company's listing ceremony in Hong Kong on Sept 20, 2018. [Photo/VCG]

Shares in Meituan jumped as high as 7 percent during morning trading in Hong Kong, briefly touching HK$74 per share. The stock ended the day at HK$72.65, up 5.3 percent from its IPO price of HK$69.

Surpassing（超越） China's second-largest e-commerce company JD.com, Meituan Dianping became the fourth-largest tech giant after BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) in China.

The company also became the ninth-largest company in terms of market value on the Hong Kong stock market, following the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China worth about HK$482.6 billion, Sina.com reported.

Wang Xing, chairman and CEO of Meituan, saw his 10.44 percent stake（利益，份额） in the company rise to HK$41.65 billion by close of business, making him the 30th richest man in China, South China Morning Post reported, citing data from Bloomberg.

"In the past eight years we have built the largest food delivery platform in China, and now every day we have 20 million people order food from us. We deliver in under 30 minutes. I think it is a huge market, because everyone needs to eat and most people eat three times a day, so now I think we are going to build a even bigger platform. Meituan Dianping is going to become one of the most important technology companies in people's lives in China, " Wang told Bloomberg TV（彭博社）.

Jason Tan, Chief Investment Officer at Jeneration Capital Management and an early investor in Meituan, is bullish about（对...积极的） the company's long-term prospects（前景） and believes the company is revolutionizing（变革） China's service industry.

"We have been long-term investors in the company for quite a bit. We started investing back in late 2015 and early 2016. I think in the service industry the opportunities in China abound（很多，不及物动词）, especially in the online-offline combined business model, " Tan told Bloomberg TV.

Tan said a combination of online-offline business models had not really been seen in China and other parts of the world, and it was an exciting opportunity to see technology disrupting（打破传统商业模式） traditional business models in the service sectors.

Meituan's core business — food delivery — has been growing fast, with 2 percent increase in food delivery order market share in the last three months. It is close to breaking even（保本）, Wang said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

The company is going to become more profitable in a more mature business environment and seek to move up the food value chain, helping restaurants source（寻找） organic ingredients and investing in new initiatives , Wang said.

Ben Harburg, managing partner of MSA Capital and an investor before the IPO, is quite optimistic about（看涨） the company's long-term prospects.

"We think it is comparable to Amazon, not in terms of material goods but in terms of services and the United States today really doesn't have any company that comes close," Harburg said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. "In the long-term it can be a massive, massive business.

Meituan started with services such as food delivery, ride-sharing（顺风车）, restaurants and hotels and has also added all kinds of new services to the platform such as e-commerce and financial services, which are high-volume, low-margin（低利润） but highly commoditized services（高度商业化的服务） that can easily be integrated to this core platform and make great profit in the long-term, Harbrug explained.

Wang Xing founded Meituan.com in 2010 as a group-buying site, and after a merger（联合） with Dianping in 2015, Meituan Dianping started to provide reviews of restaurants and other local businesses, according to Bloomberg.

Wang will remain controlling shareholder of Meituan Dianping, the second company to list with weighted voting rights（加权表决权） in Hong Kong after Xiaomi, according to the company's prospectus.