People swarm into a university in Wuhan, Hubei province, to take the civil service exam in November. Yi Dinghong (pictured right), president of Huatu Education, is bullish about the prospects for the exam training business. [China Daily]
An organization that prepares applicants for the Chinese civil service exam is planning to be the first training company to float its business publicly.
Huatu Education Group, which runs more than half of the training market for the exam taken by hundreds of thousands of people annually, is seeking to list its online business on the NASDAQ as early as next year, Yi Dinghong, Huatu's president, told China Daily yesterday.
The company plans to select underwriters within the next six months, said Wu Zhenggao, chief financial officer of Huatu.
It also plans to list the whole company in the domestic A-share market in 2012 and believes the market value of the group could reach 10 billion yuan by then, Wu said.
A venture capital company, the name of which was not disclosed, has agreed to invest 100 million yuan in Huatu. The capital injection will be completed this month, Yi said.
"Both domestic and foreign investors have been courting civil service exam training organizations quite aggressively in the past three years. But we will only offer no more than 10 percent of the shares to such investors," Yi said.
Huatu's smaller rival, Zhonggong Education Group, is also considering a public float. Li Yongxin, president of Zhonggong, said more than 40 renowned venture capital and private equity firms had contacted him this year, one quarter of which were from abroad.
The number of applications to take the civil service exams has surged 40 percent annually on average since 1997, according to statistics from Zhonggong.
A record 1 million people took the annual civil service exam across the country at the end of November seeking one of the 15,000 posts available at more than 130 government departments and agencies. Last year about 700,000 applicants took the exam. Analysts said the enthusiasm for the exam is a result of the rise in the number of graduates since 2008 and the limited number of jobs available.
Each of these applicants usually spends 500 to 1,000 yuan on textbooks and training courses, Yi said.
Founded in 2001, Huatu has set up more than 20 schools and employs more than 1,000 people around the country. Yi declined to reveal Huatu's revenues, but said this year they would grow by 80 to 90 percent from 2008.
Huatu plans to strengthen its online training service in the future because "online service and distance courses have already become an inexorable new trend in the education industry", Yi said.
Online training currently contributes about 10 percent of Huatu's total revenue, he added.
