HONG KONG: Fast-fashion retailer Shein is aiming to raise up to $1.77 billion in its initial public offering on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, a long-awaited move that values the company at roughly a quarter of its private-market peak four years ago.
According to a filing on Monday, the company is selling about 280 million Class B shares priced between HK$47.60 and HK$49.50 each. At the top of that range, the offering would value Shein at close to $27 billion.
The final price is expected to be announced on Aug. 31, with shares scheduled to begin trading on Sept. 1.
The IPO comes after Shein scrapped plans for listings in New York and London over the past four years, facing regulatory headwinds and political scrutiny in both markets.
The $27 billion valuation marks a precipitous drop from earlier private fundraising rounds. Shein was valued at $98.2 billion in 2022, and was valued at $64 billion in 2023 and April 2024, according to Reuters.
The marked decline reflects investor skepticism over the company’s growth trajectory, rising costs, and changing market conditions.
“Investors and consumers are no longer excited by the ultra-fast fashion retailer as they once were,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, told CNBC last month.
Winston Ma, an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law and former head of North America for China’s sovereign wealth fund CIC, told Reuters that public investors are no longer paying for hyper-growth.
“They are underwriting a mature cross-border platform that must now defend its profit margins against trade tariffs, higher compliance costs, and regulatory scrutiny in both the U.S. and China,” Ma said.
Shein’s financial performance has weakened amid rising trade costs. The company swung to a $99 million quarterly loss after the U.S. removed the de minimis duty exemption on small packages, which had allowed packages worth less than $800 to enter the country duty-free.
Shein said in its prospectus that it faces a “significantly higher level of duties and taxes” in the U.S., which directly contributed to a 14.3% drop in U.S. revenues during the first quarter of 2026.
The company also faces investigations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the European Union under the Digital Services Act, and data privacy cases in France and Ireland. It has set aside about $80 million at the end of March for ongoing legal and regulatory cases.
Shein initially sought an IPO valuation of $30 billion to $40 billion during investor meetings, but the final pricing reflects a more conservative outlook.
The long-awaited IPO will test investor appetite for the fast-fashion giant as it navigates a more challenging regulatory and competitive environment.
