Didi Global (DIDI) said on Monday, April 16, will hold an extraordinary general meeting on May 23 as shareholders of the battered Chinese ride-hailing giant vote on delisting from the New York Stock Exchange.
Shares of the Beijing company were tumbling 17.5% to $2.0350 at last check.
'Unprecedented Penalties'
Didi Global went public last June with an IPO price of $14 a share.
Didi said its board authorized the company "to pursue a listing of its class A ordinary shares on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange."
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), the country’s stock market watchdog, said in a statement issued immediately after Didi’s announcement that the company's delisting plan had nothing to do with other US-listed Chinese stocks, and was not related to “the ongoing audit cooperation between China and the US”, the South China Morning Post reported.
The bad news started in July following reports that the company could face potentially "unprecedented" penalties from Chinese regulators following its IPO in June.
Chinese regulators, led by the Cyberspace Administration of China, which oversees data security, launched a probe into the company’s data infrastructure and forced some of its popular apps to be taken down just days after Didi went public.
Board Member Changes
Didi Global shares took a hit in November following a report that Chinese regulators have asked the ride-hailing titan to create a plan to delist from the New York Stock Exchange.
U.S. ride-hailing company Uber Technologies (UBER) took a stake in Didi in 2016 when it merged its China unit with Didi after falling behind the company in the world’s biggest market.
Japanese tech company SoftBank (SFTBY) owns about 20% of Didi.
In addition, Didi posted the equivalent of $6.4 billion in revenue for the three months ended Dec. 31. The company saw a 15.1% decline in revenue of its core ride-hailing business in China.
Separately, the company said Fengxia Liang has been appointed as a director to the board of directors, while Martin Chi Ping Lau, president of Tencent Holding (TCTZF) , has resigned from the board.
Liang is the associate general counsel of Tencent Holding, the video game maker and operator of Chinese mega-app WeChat.
China's tech sector lost more than $80 billion in 2021, according to analysis by Bloomberg Intelligence, the biggest one-year loss since 2012.
