Apr. 23 (NBD) -- Luckin Coffee Inc, the Chinese coffee chain startup with an aim of dethroning Starbucks in China, Monday filed for an initial public offering with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

This came just four days after the company's Series B+ financing round worth 150 million U.S. dollars, which was led by BlackRock, the second largest shareholder of Starbucks. 

The coffee upstart planned to raise 100 million U.S. dollars at most, but did not disclose the number of shares it would offer. Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, CICC and Haitong International are underwriters on the deal.

Photo/Lan Suying (NBD)

Luckin has opened 2,370 stores in 28 cities in China as of March 31, 2019, of which pick-up stores with limited seating account for 91.3 percent. According to a Frost & Sullivan Report, Luckin is the second largest and the fastest-growing coffee network in China in terms of the number of stores and cups of coffee sold, the filing showed.

In the first quarter of this year, the coffee chain netted 480 million yuan (71.6 million U.S. dollars) in revenue, more than half of last year's total. Freshly brewed drinks contributed 75.4 percent to the quarterly revenue. 

Despite the whopping growth in revenue, the company was still loss-making. Its total operating expenses for the January-March period of 2019 reached 1 billion yuan (149.1 million U.S. dollars), of which cost of materials and store rental made up the lion's share. This indicates an operating loss of around 530 million yuan (79.0 million U.S. dollars) for the quarter. 

Gratifyingly, the new customer acquisition cost fell to 16.9 yuan (2.5 U.S. dollars) per new transacting customer in the first quarter of this year from 103.5 yuan (15.4 U.S. dollars) a year ago. 

Coffee consumption is just at its infancy in China, and the market is far from saturation. 

A report by the International Coffee Organization in London showed China's coffee consumption stood at about 70 billion yuan (10.4 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015. By 2025, the market is expected to reach the trillion-yuan scale.

This means huge opportunities, and also to some extent explains why BlackRock invested in Luckin. 

Early this year, Luckin said it was targeting a total of over 4,500 stores by the end of 2019, which would enable it to displace Starbucks as China's largest coffee chain by the number of stores.  

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn