Satirical media platform and publisher Most Kwai Chung went public this morning, and it was no laughing matter.
According to Reuters, stock in the company soared by as much as 880 percent at points on its first trading day in Hong Kong, making it the city’s strongest mainboard debut in more than two years.
Shares, which were priced at HK$1.20 (US$0.15) apiece, opened at HK$8.40 (US$1.07), went on to hit a high of HK$11.76 (US$1.50), then finally settled at HK$6.38 (US$0.81.) That’s a 432 percent gain, for you math fans out there.
The buzz began yesterday when a Hong Kong stock exchange filing revealed the company had raised HK$59.6million (US$7.6 million) from its offering, and that it had attracted the most public subscriptions in Hong Kong history.
How many? According to the same filing, there were 42.45 billion applications for 6,750,000 public shares. That’s 6,289 time the number of shares available for the public tranche.
The SCMP reports that with a current market capitalization of HK$1.9 billion (US$242 million), Most Kwai Chung is more valuable than other established media companies in Hong Kong such as Sing Tao News Corporation, i-Cable Communication, Hong Kong Economic Times holdings, and even Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital.
So what exactly is Most Kwai Chung? The company, which targets mainly those under 40 years of age, publishes a weekly satirical current affairs magazine called 100Most and an online video platform TV Most.
The magazine most recently had this tribute to the most famous eye-roll in China as its cover.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bglhsbkhp1A/?taken-by=100mosthk
With its tongue-in-cheek and uniquely Hong Kong tone, articles are usually under 200 words and the outlets often use Cantonese slang.
In January 2016, the company held an alternative awards show called the TV Most First Guy Ten Big Ging Cook Gum Cook Awards Distribution (just rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?), tickets for which sold out within minutes, and thousands more people watched a live broadcast of event.
According to HKFP, the awards ceremony is a satirical take on TVB’s Jade Solid Gold Awards (which is pronounced Ging Go Gam Kuk in Cantonese).
The almost three-hour award ceremony (which you can watch in full here) featured parodies of original or Cantopop songs in which the lyrics had been rewritten to reflect current affairs. This includes a song by a children’s choir singing about the pressure of the controversial Territory-wide System Assessments and this parody by group FFds of viral pop song Sugarbaby by girl group FFx. The rewritten version of the song performed at the ceremony was about former chief executive CY Leung and called Shameful Baby.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCaNBLDVkcw
