Aug. 17 (NBD) -- Chinese lifestyle flatform Meituan Dianping plans to have listing hearing next week and is expected to get listed in Hong Kong in September, if Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing nods the company's initial public offering (IPO).

The company aims to raise no more than 4 billion U.S. dollars, less than previous reported 6 billion U.S. dollars.

Meituan Dianping submitted the IPO application in June 25. The firm mandated Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Morgan Stanley to jointly sponsor its listing. 

Known as one of the leading lifestyle and travel service apps in China, Meituan Dianping generated over 5.8 billion transactions in 2017, with the gross transaction amount totaling 357 million yuan (51.8 million U.S. dollars). Last year, it served 310 million transacting users and 4.4 million active merchants in over 2,800 cities and counties in China. 

According to Meituan Dianping's prospectus, the revenue it gained in 2015, 2016 and 2017 reached 4.01 billion yuan (582.05 million U.S. dollars), 12.99 billion yuan (1.89 billion U.S. dollars) and 33.93 billion yuan (4.92 billion U.S. dollars), respectively. 

The food delivery segment has become the major contributor to the company's revenue increase in the past two years. Earnings from such business sharply surged from 174.75 million yuan (25.37million U.S. dollars) in 2015 to 21.03 billion yuan (3.05 billion U.S. dollars) for last year which accounted for 62 percent of the total revenue of the year, up from 4.3 percent for 2015.

Data from iResearch shows that Meituan Dianping maintained its leadership with its market share increasing from 31.7 percent in 2015 to 59.1 percent in the first three months of 2018.

But another research institution Analysys came to a different conclusion, saying that Meituan Dianping was outrun by its major rival Ele.me (including Baidu Takeaway which was acquired by Ele.me last year) in terms of market share for three consecutive quarters since the second half of 2017.  

Backed by the ecommerce giant Alibaba, Ele.me shows its ambition of further dominating the food delivery sector. On July 2, Wang Lei, CEO of Ele.me and vice president of Alibaba, announced the plan to invest over one billion yuan (145.15 million U.S. dollars) in upgrading service for merchants and improving consumer welfare and instant delivery services.

Email: zhanglingxiao@nbd.com.cn