By Reuters
Copyright scmp
Chinese budget retailer Miniso plans to spin off its Top Toy brand and list it in Hong Kong, riding a wave of investor enthusiasm for Chinese toymakers and highlighting the city’s renewed status as a global fundraising hotspot.
The business, which will remain a subsidiary of Guangzhou-based Miniso post spin-off, focuses on pop culture-inspired collectible toys. Hong Kong-listed Miniso had said in June it was assessing a potential spin-off of Top Toy, signalling growing confidence in the brand’s stand-alone appeal.
Launched in late 2020 with just nine stores across five Chinese cities, Top Toy has since expanded to 293 locations as of June, including a push into international markets since the December quarter of 2024.
Top Toy’s listing comes in the wake of the massive rise of Chinese toymaker Pop Mart International, whose ugly-cute Labubu dolls have become popular across the world.
The spin-off and subsequent listing highlight Hong Kong’s role as the leading offshore fundraising hub for Chinese companies, especially as US lawmakers threaten to delist Chinese firms from American stock exchanges.
Hong Kong, fuelled by the influx of Chinese companies, has emerged as the top global bourse by volume of initial public offerings (IPOs) and second listings combined so far this year, overtaking its biggest rival, the New York Stock Exchange, according to data from LSEG.
Chinese autonomous driving developer Momenta was also mulling shifting its IPO to Hong Kong from New York, Reuters reported earlier.
The spin-off and subsequent listing would increase Top Toy’s operational and financial transparency, and a stand-alone entity would enable it to make the business more appealing to investors, Miniso said.
UBS, JP Morgan, and CLSA are overall coordinators of Top Toy’s initial public offering, Miniso said.
Miniso completed a secondary stock offering in Hong Kong in July 2022, raising US$72 million as part of a wave of secondary listings amid delisting concerns. It opened a flagship store in the city in January 2024.
In January, Miniso raised US$550 million from a debt instrument to fund overseas expansion efforts and for share buy-backs. The company issued the amount in equity-linked securities, maturing on January 14, 2032, according to a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.
Miniso said in 2024 that it envisioned a global network of 40,000 stores to capitalise on a growing trend of “interest-driven” consumption, offering high-margin products centred on popular entertainment franchises, top executives said.
With more than 150 brand partnerships spanning franchises from Harry Potter to Barbie, the company saw the United States and Europe as the “next key markets” for expansion, as per-capita consumer spending on franchise-related products there was 25 times higher in the UK than in China and 60 times higher in the US, it said.
