The IPO Buzz: Lucas GC Limited (LGCL) Prices Upsized IPO at $4.00 – Low End

Lucas GC Limited (LGCL), a profitable Chinese job recruitment platform for HR professionals, jump-started the IPO market for March 2024. Lucas GC Limited upsized its IPO at pricing – to 1.5 million shares – up from 1.25 million in the prospectus – and priced the IPO at $4.00 – the low end of its $4.00-to-$6.00 range – to raise $6.0 million on Monday night, March 4, 2024. The IPO is expected to start trading today – Tuesday, March 5, 2024 – on the NASDAQ. Joseph Gunnar & Co. was the sole book-runner. The Lucas IPO’s size is small, but the company is not a small-cap entity. In the prospectus, Lucas GC Limited had a market cap (valuation) of about $396.6 million, assuming mid-point pricing. The Cayman Islands-incorporated holding company offered the stock in the IPO, and not the underlying recruitment business, the SEC filings show. Serving China’s Professional Job Hunters Lucas GC Limited targets HR professionals and professional job seekers in China with its AI-driven Platform-as-a-Service, the prospectus says. The company uses artificial intelligence (AI) as well as data analytics and blockchain technologies to serve its core clientele of human resources (HR) professionals in China, according to its SEC filings. The Beijing-based company describes itself as “the largest technology-driven online agent-centric human capital management service provider targeting professionals based on Platform-as-a-Service, or PaaS, in China,  in terms of the number of active users in the human resources industry as of June 30, 2022, and total net revenues for the year ended Dec. 31, 2021,” the prospectus says. As of Dec. 31, 2022, Lucas GC Limited had about 431,220 active registered users on its proprietary platforms, Star Career and Columbus,  the prospectus says. Lucas GC Limited says its platforms’ users “receive customized job recommendations and work as talent scouts to source suitable candidates for our corporate customers through their own trusted private social network, as well as receive training and other value-added services.” On the way to going public, Lucas GC Limited changed the deal’s size, price range and investment banking team a few times. On Feb. 15, 2024, Lucas GC Limited slashed its IPO’s size by 68.8 percent to 1.25 million shares – down from 3.07 million shares – and cut the price range to $4.00 to $6.00 – down from $6.00 to $7.00 – to raise an estimated $6.25 million, if priced at the mid-point, according to its F-1/A filing. In that same SEC filing, Lucas GC Limited disclosed that it had named Joseph Gunnar & Co. as the sole book-runner, replacing the previous joint book-runners Prime Number Capital and Jones Trading. The Chinese job-recruitment company filed to go public about a year ago – on Feb. 28, 2023. Lucas GC Limited is profitable, according to the prospectus. For the 12 months that ended June 30, 2023, Lucas GC Limited reported $9.62 million of net income on $173.71 million of revenue, the prospectus says. (For more information about these companies, please check the IPO Calendar and the individual IPO Profiles found on our website: IPOScoop.com ) Note: Never trade on proposed symbols. They have been known to change and you might buy something on the OTC Bulletin Board. To see what time the NASDAQ IPOs are expected to trade, please log in to: NASDAQTrader.com then scroll down to IPO Message. Disclosure: Nobody on the IPOScoop.com staff has a position in any stocks mentioned above, nor do they trade or invest in IPOs. The IPOScoop.com staff does not issue advice, recommendations or opinions. Disclaimer: A SCOOP Rating (Wall Street Consensus of Opening-day Premiums) is a general consensus taken, at press time, from Wall Street and investment professionals concerning how well an IPO might perform when it starts trading. The SCOOP Rating does not reflect the opinions of anyone associated with IPOScoop.com. The SCOOP ratings should not be taken as investment advice. The rating merely reflects the opinion of the professionals at the time of publication and is subject to last-minute changes due to market conditions, changes in a specific offering and other factors, such as changes in the proposed offering terms and the shifting of investor interest in the IPO. The information offered is taken from sources we believe to be reliable, but we cannot guarantee the accuracy.