Pedestrians pass the Ceji store in Shanghai, China on March 14th, 2025.
cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
China’s bubble tea chain change filed an initial US offer on Tuesday, calling for the company to trade on Nasdaq using the ticker “Cha.”
The IPO filing comes as the company prepares to open its first US store at Westfield Century City Mall in Los Angeles this spring.
As of December 31, the company has grown to over 6,400 tea shops in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand since its establishment in 2017, according to regulatory filings. Approximately 97% of the locations are in China.
Chagee said it generated $344.5 million in net profit in 2024 from $1.7 billion in revenue.
According to regulatory submissions, founder and CEO Junjie Zhang has created a chain to modernize tea drinking after being inspired by the success of international coffee companies. China is Starbucks’ second largest market.
According to the company’s website, Cheji hopes to “serve tea lovers in 100 countries, create 300,000 job opportunities around the world, and provide 15 billion cups of fresh tea each year.”
If Chagee is published on Nasdaq, it will take part in the decline in Chinese companies seeking US listings. According to the US Economic and Security Review Board, between January 2023 and January 2024, the number of Chinese companies listed on three US exchanges fell by 5%.
Political scrutiny has shattered Chinese companies’ hopes for a US IPO as relations between the US and Beijing began to frost. Shane is currently planning a London IPO later this year after lawmakers pushed back plans to open it on US exchanges.
US investors may also be cautious about investing in another Chinese drink chain after the example set up by Luckin Coffee.
Luckin was founded in 2017 and grew rapidly. By 2019, it surpassed the number of Starbucks locations in China and released it on the Nasdaq.
However, in 2020, Lucky revealed that it had inflated sales and had been removed from the Nasdaq. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. Luckin came out of bankruptcy by 2022.
Since then, they have overtaken Starbucks by selling it as China’s largest coffee retailer.
