It’s been more than a decade since Baidu went public through the NASDAQ, and the Chinese company has since risen to become one of the largest Internet companies in the world. However, while being listed on the American stock market may have been the best choice for Baidu in the past, CEO Robin Li claims that issues with American investors has led the company to consider returning to its home country sometime in the near future.
Search giant Baidu is one of the biggest and oldest Chinese tech firms listed on the American stock market, having made its initial public offering on the NASDAQ just over ten years ago. But in the early moments of its second listed decade, the company is eyeing the apparently-greener pastures back on its own side of the Pacific. Baidu CEO Robin Li reportedly told reporters on Wednesday that Baidu is considering completely delisting from the NASDAQ, and then re-listing in China on the A-shares market. It certainly isn’t the first tech company with that idea; early this summer a rash of Chinese tech firms listed in the US announced delisting plans, although China’s domestic stock market crash derailed or delayed many of them. China’s market still hasn’t recovered from its summer slump – in fact, it still isn’t accepting new IPOs – but unlike the trend-followers who made plans to delist in the summer, Baidu isn’t thinking about heading home because it wants to ride the wave of a bull market. Rather, Li says, it’s because American investors don’t understand online-to-offline (O2O).