A three-year-old e-cigarette company from China went public on the New York Stock Exchange last month. It’s already worth $35 billion.
Founder and CEO Kate Wang speaking at a dinner to honor RELX employees in 2019. She worked at Bain & Company, Uber, and Didi Chuxing before branching out into the e-cigarette market. Credit: RELX
RELX Technology was founded in 2018 to tap into a smoking-hot business possibility in China: e-cigarettes. Last month, after becoming the most popular branded e-cigarette company in China in just three years, the company raised $1.4 billion in an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.
Shares of the company jumped 86 percent on the first day of trading, giving RELX a market capitalization of more than $38 billion and making it instantly one of the world's most valuable e-cigarette brands.
“China is the biggest tobacco market in the world, so it follows that it could be a very conducive environment for vaping products,” says Pieter Vorster, managing director of Idwala Research, an advisory firm focused on tobacco harm reduction. “It could be huge — that’s clearly what investors think.”
Investors seem to be discounting the risks associated with e-cigarettes, which have raised health and safety concerns in the U.S. and elsewhere. There are also r
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Robert Lighthizer, the U.S. Trade Representative under Donald Trump, reflects on his decision to launch the trade war with China and begin the process of "strategic decoupling" — a process he says the U.S. must see through to the end.
