Chinese tea chain Chagee filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to trade on the Nasdaq using the ticker “CHA.”
The IPO filing comes as the company prepares to open its first U.S. store in the Westfield Century City mall in Los Angeles this spring.
Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to more than 6,400 teahouses across China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Roughly 97% of its locations are in China.
Chagee said it generated net income of $344.5 million from revenue of $1.7 billion in 2024.
Founder and CEO Junjie Zhang created the chain to modernize tea drinking after being inspired by the success of international coffee companies, according to a regulatory filing. China is Starbucks’ second-largest market.
Looking ahead, Chagee wants to “serve tea lovers in 100 countries, generate 300,000 employment opportunities worldwide, and deliver 15 billion cups of freshly brewed tea annually,” according to the company’s website.
If Chagee goes public on the Nasdaq, it will join the dwindling number of Chinese companies seeking a U.S. listing. From January 2023 to January 2024, the number of Chinese companies listed on the three largest U.S. exchanges fell 5%, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
As relations between the U.S. and Beijing have grown frostier, political scrutiny has dashed some Chinese companies’ hopes of a U.S. IPO. Shein is now planning a London IPO for later this year after lawmakers pushed back on its plans to go public on a U.S. exchange.
U.S. investors might also be wary to invest in another Chinese beverage chain after the example set by Luckin Coffee.
Luckin was founded in 2017 and grew quickly. By 2019, it had outnumbered the number of Starbucks locations in China and gone public on the Nasdaq.
But in 2020, Luckin disclosed that it had inflated its sales, resulting in its delisting from the Nasdaq. The company filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy. Luckin emerged from bankruptcy by 2022, minus the executives that were responsible for the fraud.
Since then, it has overtaken Starbucks as China’s largest coffee retailer by sales.
