(Yicai Global) Nov. 6 -- Kuaishou Technology, the world's highest-grossing live-streaming platform, has put an end to weeks of speculation by submitting its application for an initial public offering in Hong Kong ahead of its rival ByteDance.

The Beijing-based short video application didn't disclose its fundraising target or timing details in the prospectus it filed yesterday.

Kuaishou will go public in the first quarter of next year, with Bank of America and Morgan Stanley as sponsors, per previous media reports.

ByteDance has also been mulling different fundraising options, which could involve a new round with familiar investors such as Sequoia Capital or packaging Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, with news aggregator Jinri Toutiao for a Hong Kong IPO, Reuters reported yesterday, citing two people familiar with the matter.

The prospectus shows that Kuaishou made CNY25.3 billion (USD3.8 billion) in revenue in the first half of this year, rising by 48 percent from a year ago. However, its loss was more than double that at CNY68.1 billion, suggesting a widening trend from last year. Its loss in 2019 was CNY19.6 billion.

In some ways, Kuaishou is bigger than its more widely known competitor ByteDance's TikTok. Kuaishou ranked No. 1 globally in terms of gross billing based on virtual gifts that users can donate to hosts and paid subscriptions in the six months ended June, according to iResearch. It also suggested that Kuaishou was the world's second-largest short video app by average daily active users and No. 2 in live-streaming e-commerce by gross merchandise volume.

The company's live-streaming business made almost 69 percent of its revenue in the first half, even though the portion was declining. Meanwhile, online marketing services have been rapidly rising to account for more than 28 percent of the total. The monthly average revenue per live-streaming user has fallen more than 10 percent to CNY45.2 (USD6.80) since 2017.

Live-streaming has been driving online retail. The related GMV jumped more than 30 times to CNY109.6 billion (USD16.5 billion) over the six months from a year earlier.

Kuaishou had 302 million average DAUs by June 30, and each of them spent over 85 minutes on the app every day. Its database had over 26 billion user-generated short videos and some 1 billion live-streaming videos were created on the app over the six months.

Editor: Emmi Laine