(Yicai Global) April 14 -- Chinese online travel agency Trip.Com Group has raised about HKD8.5 billion (USD1.1 billion) from its secondary listing in Hong Kong.

Trip.Com sold 31.6 million shares priced at HKD268 (USD34.50) apiece, the Shanghai-based company said in a filing yesterday. That was 19.5 percent below the top end of the marketed range of HKD333 and represented a 2.4 percent discount to its closing price in New York the same day.

The flight and hotel bookings platform is joining a group of US-listed Chinese firms looking to appeal to investors closer to their user bases. E-commerce giant JD.Com, internet titan Baidu, and Bilibili have all sought secondary listings in the special administrative region within the last year to raise extra funds and to mitigate regulatory risks abroad.

The offering may be oversubscribed as much as 15.9 times, according to data from investment platform Futubull.

Trip.Com will use the funds raised to expand its services, improve user experience, invest in technology, enhance operating efficiency, as well as for general corporate purposes, it said.

The firm made a CNY3.2 billion (USD489.3 million) net loss last year, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic, after revenue fell 49 percent to CNY18.3 billion (USD2.8 billion), according to its listing prospectus. It had net profit of CNY7 billion in 2019.

Trip.Com's Nasdaq-listed shares [NASDAQ:TCOM] climbed as much as 1.1 percent in pre-market trading today, after sliding 0.2 percent yesterday.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi