Zhihu raised $523M on the NYSE at $9.50 a share — two years later its ADS traded below $1

Zhihu, the Chinese question-and-answer platform often described as 'China's Quora,' listed on the NYSE in March 2021, pricing its IPO at the bottom of its range at $9.50 per ADS and raising about $522.5 million. Shares fell as much as 15% below the offer price on the first day of trading. Thirteen months later, in April 2022, Zhihu added a secondary listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at HK$32.06 a share; that debut also slid, closing 24% lower as SEC delisting-watchlist pressure and China's regulatory crackdown weighed on the stock.

Zhihu kept expanding after listing: paid membership content (盐选), live-streaming and other diversification pushed revenue from RMB 1.35 billion in 2020 to RMB 2.96 billion in 2021, but content and operating costs grew just as fast, and the 2021 net loss widened 151% year-on-year to RMB 1.3 billion. The net loss stayed large in 2022 at RMB 1,578.4 million before narrowing 46.8% to RMB 839.5 million in 2023 as the company tightened cost control — three straight years of losses that together approached the sum it had raised in its IPO.

The stock kept sliding through the losses. On December 28, 2023, the NYSE notified Zhihu that its ADS price had fallen below the exchange's $1.00 minimum average over 30 trading days — a decline of roughly 90% from the $9.50 IPO price less than three years earlier. Zhihu regained compliance by June 2024 after the price recovered above the threshold, avoiding a forced delisting but leaving the stock a small fraction of its listing value.