Tencent Holdings Ltd agreed to buy a 5% stake in China’s Yonghui Superstores Co for about 4.22bn yuan ($639mn), joining rival Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in teaming up with a bricks-and-mortar retailer.
Shenzhen-based Tencent is buying about 478.5mn shares from existing shareholders at 8.81 yuan apiece, Yonghui said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange.
The price is a 9.9% discount to Fuzhou, China-based Yonghui’s last price of 9.78 yuan, before trading was halted on December 8. Yonghui, which operates supermarket franchises and has more than 580 stores in China, plans to resume trading tomorrow, according to the filing.
The tie-up between tech behemoth Tencent and Yonghui follows Alibaba’s $2.9bn purchase of a stake in Chinese grocery retailer Sun Art Retail Group Ltd in November. China’s biggest e-commerce company agreed last month to buy 36% of Sun Art, which operates about 400 hypermarkets under the Auchan and RT-Mart banners across the country.
Yonghui is China’s fourth-biggest hypermarket operator by market share, and already has a tech-industry investor in JD.com Inc, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
Shenzhen-based Tencent is buying about 478.5mn shares from existing shareholders at 8.81 yuan apiece in Yonghui, sources said yesterday.
