Aier Eye Hospital Plans to Go Public in Hong Kong

The leading private ophthalmology group, Aier Eye Hospital, has officially submitted its prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), aiming to be listed on the HKEX Main Board with exclusive sponsor HuaTai Securities. If the listing is successfully completed, Aier Eye Hospital will become the first Chinese ophthalmic hospital group to achieve a dual "A+H" listing.

The core purpose of this Hong Kong fundraising is directly targeted at overseas mergers and acquisitions. Aier Eye Hospital plans to prioritize acquisitions of stable platform-based chain institutions in mature markets such as Europe and North America, while in rapidly growing emerging markets like Southeast Asia and South America, it tends to acquire small and medium-sized institutions and then expand its share organically through internal expansion. Chairman Chen Bang frankly stated that after years of overseas cultivation and management accumulation, there are now valuable overseas targets with potential, and Aier Eye Hospital is facing a critical window for overseas expansion.

This strategic shift has its practical logic. Since 2014, Aier Eye Hospital has been exploring the industrial M&A fund model in China, introducing experts and cultivating management systems to improve the profitability of targets before integrating and acquiring them. This approach has supported its income and profits to maintain a rapid growth of 25% to 30% for a long time. However, as domestic high-quality targets are gradually integrated and the focus of mergers and acquisitions shifts from first-tier cities to lower-tier markets, the marginal efficiency has significantly decreased. In 2025, Aier Eye Hospital's revenue was 22.353 billion yuan, with a year-on-year growth rate of only 6.53%, significantly slowing down from its peak period. At the same time, domestic competition in the ophthalmology market has intensified, and core businesses such as refractive and visual light have shifted from incremental expansion to stock competition.

However, overseas expansion is not a simple repetition of domestic merger and acquisition stories. Medical services heavily rely on local operations, and there are significant differences in doctor practice systems, medical insurance payment systems, regulatory standards, and patient consumption habits across different countries and regions. Whether the chain medical capabilities that have worked in the Chinese market can be transformed into equivalent scale efficiency and profitability overseas is the real question that needs to be answered behind this "A+H" dual listing.