Chinese hotel franchisor GreenTree Hospitality debuts on NYSE

NEW YORK - Chinese franchised hotel operator GreenTree Hospitality Group Ltd made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Tuesday, trading under the ticker symbol of "GHG".

GreenTree priced its initial public offering of 10.2 million American depositary shares (ADSs) at $14 per ADS, below the range of $16 to $18 given by the company, for a total offering size of approximately $143 million. Each ADS represents one Class A ordinary share.

The company started trading at $14.40 per share on Tuesday, rising 2.9 percent from its pricing, and was traded at $13.11 apiece around midday.

Approximately 60 percent of the net proceeds of this offering will be used for potential acquisitions of domestic and overseas operators, while 25 percent of the net proceeds of this offering will be used for the organic expansion of the hotel chain and the improvement of existing hotel properties, GreeTree said in the prospectus.

Morgan Stanley, BofA Merrill Lynch, UBS Investment Bank and ICBC International Securities Limited acted as underwriters.

The Shanghai-based company was the fourth largest economy to mid-scale hotel group in China in terms of number of hotel rooms as of 2016, according to China Hospitality Association.

As of December 31, 2017, GreenTree's hotel network comprised 2,289 hotels with 190,807 rooms in China, covering all four centrally-administrated municipalities and 263 cities throughout 27 provinces and autonomous regions in China, according to the filing.

GreenTree's revenue was $119.6 million in 2017, an increase of 20.3 percent compared with the year before, while its net income was $43.8 million in 2017, up 7.2 percent from a year ago, the company said in its prospectus.