Many companies are thriving in the American IPO market, while others find it surprisingly quiet. It is becoming more apparent that there is a significant gap between the two groups of private companies seeking to list.The Exchange was intrigued to learn why Didi, a Chinese ride-hailing company, felt so cheap when it first established an IPO price range. Didi shares felt less expensive than its American counterparts at the proposed valuation interval. Didi remained true to its original expectations, pricing shares at $14 per share. This is the highest end of its range but not higher.DingDong, a Chinese grocery-delivery service that has lowered its IPO raise but had a disappointing American debut, also float this week. Missfresh, an online Chinese grocery delivery company, went public last week.These data points are enough to make you skeptical about U.S.-listed Initial Public Offerings. If you're going to be overpriced and then trade poorly, why go public in the United States? Many Chinese companies seem to be having difficulty finding the demand for their shares on American stock exchanges. However, domestic companies are experiencing positive results.The Exchange examines startups, markets, and money. Every Saturday, The Exchange sends out a newsletter.This is tech companies, so I should also add that the Exchange does not track IPO results from commodities diggers or biotech labs. It's a vast world. We must focus.Contrary data points are available to support our general thesis. As such, Nios recent increase in share prices could be considered. However, if you compare recent IPO news from SentinelOne or Xometry to what weve seen in the American public markets from Chinese tech companies, it seems that there is a gap.Uneven groundThe company's IPO price of $14 per shares values Didis at $67 billion (non-diluted) and $70 billion if more shares are included in market cap calculations. We previously calculated that the company trades at a steep multiples discount to Uber, with $6.5 billion in Q1 2021 total revenue and positive net profit.Uber's trailing price/sales ratio of 8.3x is a fact. It would be worth almost $179 billion if we valued Didis' revenues over the past twelve months at the same rate. It is not. That is the gap we want to emphasize.Contrast this with a few other Chinese tech IPOs that have performed poorly in the United States over the past week.
