The phone maker Xiaomi Falls then rises to debut in Hong Kong

Cofounded by Billionaire Lei Jun, Xiaomi has a market value of about 50 billion dollars, far from the $ 100 billion touted last year .The 1.2% drop at the trade close is the worst performance of the first day for a Hong Kong IPO of more than $ 1 billion since 2015.

Such a scandal can be a deterrent to Chinese technology companies Meituan Dianping in Hong Kong and Tencent Music in the US: a disappointing performance for an eight-year-old smartphone brand whose plans for expansion global turn into a low-margin hardware company Xiaomi has set its IPO at profit levels higher than more established technology giants, including Apple, Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Facebook Inc., arguing that it was an Internet service company, even though most of its revenues came from Internet services. equipment. He then suffered a number of setbacks, from being forced to abandon his plans to sell Chinese certificates of deposit in Shanghai at the beginning of the trade tensions.

"It will be difficult to convince investors," says Elsie Sheng, an badyst at Orient Finance. Holdings. "Although it claims to be an internet company with a lot of big data-related businesses, it remains a hardware business in terms of revenue source." Even in smartphones, most devices sold are products Low-end. "

In the longer run, Xiaomi's supporters claim that India's market dominance to China and a diversification of the Internet of Things. Like Lei Jun hit the opening gong on Monday, he continued to launch Xiaomi as an "Internet company."

Xiaomi's IPO has been hailed as the most important Chinese technology debut in years, attracting investors like George Soros and his billionaires. Ka-shing, Jack Ma and Pony Ma. Institutional investors, including Hillhouse Capital, Qualcomm Inc. and China Mobile Ltd., also contributed to growth.

If 50 billion dollars are not insignificant for a company, many profits were amortized in 2016 a round of financing 2014. Goldman Sachs Group, Morgan Stanley and CLSA Ltd. were co-sponsors of Xiaomi

"Technology companies looking to list their stock will have to take a more cautious approach to pricing," said Anthea Lai, an badyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. That's "as investors become more cautious about where to put their money given the current trade tensions and several IPO flops recently."

Xiaomi's tribulations began almost from the beginning of his IPO trip. He had planned to raise about $ 10 billion worth up to $ 100 billion by taking advantage of the CDRs: an instrument that Beijing has pushed to encourage companies to register at home. But it collapsed when he could not answer the questions asked by the regulators.

Regardless of market fluctuations, the company has raised billions to finance Lei's vision of adopting artificial intelligence technology to cloud computing. Baidu Inc. It was a long time ago, when the billionaire sparked an internal introspection through a sincere missive to employees

The sale of phones in developed markets furthermore sea ​​could be a more realistic goal, given the growing credibility of Xiaomi with affordable but reliable devices, as building a wing of content and full-fledged Internet services.

"It really depends on the speed of growth – that's the open question now" Ryan Roberts, senior badyst for MCM Partners, told Bloomberg Television. "If they can maintain that, it will bring an increase in the margin only from the combination of income."

Lei, who has already drawn comparisons in the national media to Steve Jobs, has taken over shot at Apple. On Monday, the billionaire was keen to thank his supporters and his 190 million monthly active users known as Mi Fans.

"Although macroeconomic conditions are far from ideal, we think that a big company can still get up – challenge it and stand out," Lei told an audience packed at the Stock Exchange. Hong Kong

With files from the Associated Press.