Sherwood News

Chinese IPOs in the US have been making a comeback... of sorts

Even with ~$6 billion tea giant Chagee now in the mix, the current landscape still seems to be deterring bigger names.

4/23/25 10:38AM

Strange as the timing may seem, given the broader geopolitical picture, many Chinese companies are seeing 2025 as the year to hit the US public market. Last week, tea giant Chagee soared 21% on its Nasdaq debut to hit a $6.2 billion valuation, while a flurry of tech firms are reportedly looking to follow suit, per Bloomberg.

Red wave

Chagee’s $411 million raise last Thursday made it the largest Chinese consumer company listing in the US since 2021, momentarily bucking the drought of big Chinese initial public offerings that had been attributed to deteriorating relations between the two nations. Still, even against the backdrop of President Trump’s ongoing tariffs, postponed IPOs from other companies, and talk of Chinese stocks being delisted from US exchanges, 2025 has largely picked up where last year left off in terms of enticing companies looking to list in the US.

There was once a time when Chinese tech companies deciding to go public in America would shake Wall Street, like e-commerce behemoth Alibaba’s IPO in 2014, which initially raised $21.8 billion and was later valued at $25 billion, making it the largest in history at the time. While a host of companies followed suit, the surge wasn’t to last: after Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi Global decided to go public on the NYSE in 2021 — despite not getting the green light from Beijing regulators — it was forced to delist by the Chinese government, complicating the listing process ever since.

The tide has been slowly shifting recently, with Chinese offerings on the US market up almost 47% in 2024 compared to the year before, per data from US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC). However, the precarious regulatory landscape was clearly a hurdle that many bigger companies were wary of even before the latest tariffs, with the 37 offerings in 2024 worth just $1.9 billion, down from $10.7 billion just four years earlier.

Interestingly, there had already been 11 offerings from companies based in Shanghai, Beijing, and beyond by March 7 this year, according to the USCC, as China’s government continues to boost and protect its domestic businesses.

Luke Kawa4h

Hims & Hers sees surge turn sour in its biggest reversal since the 2025 stock market bottom

Hims & Hers erased gains of more than 5% in early trading to close down more than 7% on Thursday.

It’s the first time the telehealth company saw an intraday gain of 5% or more turn into a loss of 5% or more since April 8, 2025, which marked that year’s bottom for the S&P 500 amid the tariff-induced tumult.

Hims has been on an absolute tear this week after reaching a renewed partnership with Novo Nordisk to sell its weight-loss drugs, a pact that resolves the massive legal overhang that had been plaguing the stock. The momentum continued as Wall Street scrambled to boost its outlook on the shares following this arrangement.

There’s not much in the way of company-specific news to point to: Hims, like many other firms, tanked after the market opened as oil climbed.

Perhaps this is just a consolidation period — the so-called pause that refreshes — or a potential sign that the stock has squeezed all the juice it could out of one catalyst as the overall market wobbles under the weight of high oil prices brought about by the ongoing war in the Middle East.

Tasha Matsumoto

Stocks tumble as Brent crude closes above $100

Investors were plagued by inflation fears amid rising oil prices and ongoing private credit concerns.

Matt Phillips4h

Firefly Aerospace rockets higher as traders snap up calls

Firefly Aerospace shares soared after Wednesday’s successful liftoff of its Alpha rocket for the first time in almost a year was followed by a flurry of call buying in the options market.

Shortly before 3 p.m. ET on Thursday, roughly 36,000 call options on Firefly had changed hands, more than twice the average over the previous 20 days.

The Cedar Park, Texas-based designer and manufacturer of space launch vehicles has lost some serious altitude since its August 2025 IPO. It’s down about 60% since then, even after Thursday’s surge.

Vandenberg rocket launch visible across West Coast. Here's a recap

Luke Kawa

Woe de toilette

Spiking oil prices have investors turning up their noses at fragrance stocks

Estée Lauder and International Flavors & Fragrances are among the worst-performing stocks since the kinetic conflict in the Middle East started.

Saleah Blancaflor5h

Gas jumps $0.60 in under two weeks, hitting $3.60 as the market braces for possible $4 a gallon

Spring is just around the corner and gas prices just keep getting higher.

The national average for a gallon of regular gas is currently at $3.598, according to the American Automobile Association, jumping nearly $0.35 since last week.

The most recent prices are similar to the spring of 2024, while this is the first time it has gone above the $3.50 threshold since July 29, 2024.

While gas prices tend to increase during the warmer months, crude oil prices have played a major part in what consumers have been paying, at times exceeding $100 per barrel in the past few days.

To offset the rising energy costs due to the conflict in the Middle East, the US Department of Energy announced it would release 172 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves over the next four months as part of the larger effort to release 400 million oil barrels.

Prediction markets are pricing in an implied 62% chance that the price of gas exceeds $4.00 by the end of the month. Things may get even more expensive, though; markets are pricing in roughly even chances that gas finishes above $4.10, and even a 22% chance gasoline averages $4.50 per gallon by March 31.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

US gas prices jump to nearly $3.60 per gallon