Shein Shares Fall in Long-Awaited Hong Kong Stock Market Debut

HONG KONG — Shares in fast-fashion giant Shein fell on their long-awaited Hong Kong Stock Exchange debut on Tuesday, capping years of delay and repeated setbacks in the company's efforts to go public.

Trading under stock code 0625, Shein opened at its HK$48.56 IPO price before dropping as much as 10 percent in early trading, touching a low of about HK$43.72. The stock later pared some of its losses. By the time of publication, shares were changing hands around HK$46.6, down roughly 4 percent on the day, giving the company a market value of about $26.3 billion. That compares with the roughly $26.5 billion valuation set at the IPO price, a modest gap that reflects the stock's partial recovery from its steepest intraday losses.

Valuation Reset and Fundraising

Shein raised HK$13.6 billion, about $1.74 billion, by selling around 280 million shares, one of Hong Kong's largest share sales this year. The IPO price valued the company at roughly $26 billion, a fraction of the nearly $100 billion valuation it commanded in a private funding round in 2022. That figure does not mean Shein lost three-quarters of its value outright, but rather that public investors were only willing to price the company at a valuation roughly three-quarters below its 2022 private-market peak.

Demand for the offering was solid but not spectacular by Hong Kong standards. The retail portion of the IPO was subscribed about 5.63 times, while the international offering was covered about 2.59 times. Investors have increasingly gravitated toward technology, artificial intelligence and robotics listings on Chinese exchanges this year, leaving less appetite for a consumer retail name facing cost and regulatory pressure. Dickie Wong, executive director of research at uSMART Securities, said before the listing, "I'm not that positive on the Shein IPO."

Long Path to Listing

The debut caps a long and difficult path to public markets. Shein previously attempted to list in New York, where it faced congressional scrutiny over labor practices and data handling, and later in London, where China's securities regulator objected to how the company described risks tied to its Chinese operations. Hong Kong emerged as the more realistic option as Chinese regulators encouraged domestic-linked firms to list closer to home.

Trade Pressures and Financial Headwinds

Shein's business model has come under mounting pressure from trade policy changes. The United States eliminated the "de minimis" exemption that once let Shein ship low-value parcels to American customers duty-free, and the European Union imposed a new charge on small parcels from outside the bloc earlier this year. The US and Europe together accounted for more than half of Shein's revenue in the first quarter.

Revenue growth has slowed sharply, from 41.1 percent in 2023 to 20.7 percent in 2024, 8 percent in 2025, and just 1.1 percent in the first quarter of 2026. Shein swung to a $99 million net loss in the first quarter of 2026, compared with a $395 million profit a year earlier. The company's prospectus attributed the loss mainly to fair-value losses on its convertible redeemable preferred shares, an accounting item tied to the IPO process, while also citing higher trade costs, pricing pressure and weaker demand tied to the Iran war's effect on Middle East markets.

Shein faces growing competition from rivals including Temu and AliExpress in the cross-border e-commerce market it helped popularize. It plans to direct about 80 percent of IPO proceeds toward technology upgrades and brand building.

Implications for Hong Kong

The muted debut is a notable test for Hong Kong's IPO market, which has raised more than $40 billion so far this year and faces a backlog of companies awaiting listings. Shein's arrival is seen as a symbolic win for the exchange's effort to reassert itself as a global financial hub, even as the stock's performance highlights investor caution toward consumer-facing companies exposed to shifting trade rules and slowing growth.