Yimutian Falls Below IPO Price on Nasdaq Debut

On Aug. 19, Yimutian, a China-based agricultural B2B digital services company, made its Nasdaq debut, marking the first time that a full agricultural industry-chain internet firm from China has gone public on a major global exchange.

The company sold 4.522 million American depositary shares at $4.10 per share in its IPO. Underwriters were also granted an overallotment option of 488,000 shares, which, if fully exercised, would bring total proceeds to about $22 million.

Shares opened at $5.88 but ended their first trading day at $2.80, down 31.7% from the offer price and giving the company a market value of $320 million. By press time, the stock had slipped even further to $2.34, a 43% drop from the IPO price, with a market cap of $268 million.

Yimutian, founded in 2011 and headquartered in Beijing, is a leading agricultural internet enterprise in China dedicated to driving agricultural transformation through digital technology. Starting as a B2B digital platform for agricultural supply and sales, the company has gradually expanded into a comprehensive digital group covering the entire agricultural value chain, including cultivation, wholesale and distribution. By leveraging its digital platform, Yimutian focuses on addressing growers’ challenges in selling their produce, providing matchmaking services between agricultural brokers and urban wholesalers.

Since 2013, Yimutian has raised several hundred million Chinese yuan from investors such as HSG (formerly known as Sequoia Capital China), Huachuang, Sequoia Capital, ZhenFund and Yunfeng Capital. Ahead of the IPO, HSG held a 15.9% stake, the largest among external shareholders.

By the end of 2024, Yimutian’s platform had more than 38 million registered merchants and 21 million SKUs, generating 147 million searches, 583 million communications and 187 million potential transactions annually. Its network spans over 340 cities and 2,800 counties, covering more than 65% of major wholesale markets.

Despite this scale, the company remains loss-making. Revenue totaled 156 million yuan ($21.81 million) in 2022, 188 million yuan ($26.29 million) in 2023 and 161 million yuan ($22.51 million) in 2024, while net losses stood at 116 million yuan ($16.22 million), 106 million yuan ($14.82 million) and 34.9 million yuan ($4.88 million), respectively.

As an information intermediary, Yimutian is involved throughout the agricultural value chain, from pre-production information services to in-production management and post-production transactions, providing matchmaking and related services between sellers and wholesalers. However, China’s agricultural sector is highly fragmented and dominated by smallholder farmers, making standardization difficult. Relying solely on information to facilitate transactions is often ineffective. Most merchants on the platform are small businesses; unless they scale up, the platform struggles to attract stronger players who can drive transaction volumes. The core challenge for agricultural information brokerage lies in closing actual deals. Because users find it difficult to generate profits, their willingness to pay for such services remains limited.

Image: Yimutian

This article was based on a Chinese article. Read the original article.