Medical data group abandons plan for US IPO at the last minute after tech crackdown by Chinese regulators on Didi and other internet-based platforms
(AF) Chinese medical data group LinkDoc has cancelled an initial public offering in the United States after Beijing ramped up its tech crackdown last week against Didi Global and other companies that listed abroad recently.
LinkDoc Technology Ltd has suddenly shelved an IPO that was set to raise up to $211 million in the US, according to sources who spoke to Reuters and Nikkei.
The company, which is reportedly backed by Alibaba, filed for an IPO last month and was due to set a price for its shares later today (Thursday July 8).
Chinese regulators are concerned about the security of large volumes of personal data accumulated by internet-based platforms that list in the US. Analysts says they also suspect that Beijing is pressing domestic companies to list in Hong Kong instead of overseas.
LinkDoc describes itself as a “leading” big data company from China focused on oncology, the treatment of cancer and tumors.
Based in Beijing, LDoc, as it is known, has systems that use artificial intelligence to assist in patient management, and other services. “Through clinical data fusion system, the company helps hospitals and departments to establish a structured electronic medical record database,” it says.
“We have developed proprietary machine learning and human language processing enabled mechanism to structure millions of clinical EMR [electronic medial records] into research grade data,” the group says in its page on LinkedIn.
“We have collaborated with [over] 600 departments from [over] 300 top oncology centres in China. We are developing LinkDoc solutions from these precious real world big data to empower clinical doctors, healthcare industry and patients with better oncology care.”
The markets website Seeking Alpha said six days ago: “LDOC is growing quickly, has potentially large expansion capabilities into other health areas and the IPO appears reasonably valued, so is worth consideration.
“Management is headed by founder and Chief Executive Officer Tianze Zhang, who was previously an employee at Tencent and Alibaba and founded Truststone, which provides health information systems to pharmaceutical and medical institutions.
“LinkDoc has received at least $366 million in equity investment from investors including Digital Medical Technology, New Enterprise Associates, China Broadband Capital, Esta Investments Pte, Lifetech Company and Alibaba Health Technology Company.”
The company’s primary offerings include: LinkCare (a continuous care platform), LinkData (a longitudinal medical data system) and LinkSolutions (a clinical trial matching service).
“As of March 31, 2021, LinkDoc had $125.8 million in cash and $116.5 million in total liabilities,” it said, but added “Free cash flow during the 12 months ended March 31, 2021, was negative ($37.9 million).”
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